


Mountain Springs High School

by animal



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 90's Music, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo is a shithead, Ben and Rey are both 18, Bi Poe Dameron, Bullying, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Insecurities, Mutual Pining, No age gap, Past Underage Sex, Rey fights back, Rey has parents, Rey won't have it, Secret Admirer, Slow Burn, SoftBoi!BenSolo, Teasing!Ben, Teen Angst, This is the 90's welcome, Troublemaker Ben Solo, brief mentions of, might qualify as a slow burn, single bed, texting-a-stranger trope but it's the nineties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 44,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animal/pseuds/animal
Summary: Two weeks into Ben Solo's senior year, he already knows he hates Rey Jones.A few days later, Rey Jones hates Ben Solo back.





	1. Words can't be that important

**Author's Note:**

> If you feel like there's a tag missing along the way, don't hesitate to tell me -I will update accordingly.  
> Bullying will only be one of the themes -we're all here for the romance people. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading =)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: casual homophobia and misogyny ahead.

_1994_

 

  
Up until they're walking down the main hallway of Mountain Springs High School, Han Solo's impatience doesn't show much. The way he opens the door, pushing it out of his way with full force, makes his inner emotions clear to anyone who sees. Ben flinches.

He's a few feet behind, and he slows down a bit, before catching up with long strides.  
  
He can hear Han is muttering something, but he can't make out what exactly until he's close enough.

 

"... _Damn embarrassment_. ---Can't have a break with him, can't have a break."  
  
  
  
...Ben doesn't know what he expected.

 

His father wasn't likely to display anything else than disappointment after what happened. So he doesn't know why he feels so hurt hearing words he's heard a hundred times before.

 

He tucks his chin as he walks behind him, his backpack on one shoulder, his hair falling in his eyes, trying to focus on the cracks he sees on the ground or something. 

 

 

 

But the second Han goes around his car that he parked just in front of the high school lawn, all of sudden, he's shouting at his son:

" _Don't you dare getting into this car!_ "

Ben freezes in place, lips tight -bracing himself for the rest. 

" _I'm ashamed of you_ ," Han snarls. "Maybe when you're done behaving like a _fucking idiot_ , I'll tolerate your company a bit more!"

"Han--"

"...this way you'll have some time to think hard about your past decisions."  
  
  
On those words, he gets into the driver's seat, and slams the door it seems as hard as he can. 

The way he starts the car and accelerates shows he can't get away from his son fast enough.  
The engine roars almost comically loud, but Ben doesn't have a hint of a smile on his face. He's clenching his teeth, trying to adjust his breathing and swallow down the burn he's feeling inside.  

 

A few hours earlier him, Evan and Lopez are in the boys bathroom, when Lopez takes a black sharpie out of his pocket and starts drawing the biggest dick on the wall, the one facing the entry. 

Evan laughs so much he can hardly breathe for five full minutes. The dick Lopez draws is veiny, hairy, with small balls and a raging erection. 

He puts some effort into it, and plenty of details too, before turning to them, proud as can be:

"I hope you both appreciate my work of art."

Wordlessly at first, Ben reach out for the sharpie, and Lopez hands it to him, a smirk growing in anticipation. 

Ben braces himself with one arm against the wall, and carefully starts writing a few words with gentle curves, muttering: 

"Surely we can make it better..."

Evan starts giggling before Ben even writes the punchline -if it can be counted as one, which _no it can't_ \- and predictably loses his shit when the sentence is complete. 

 

Lopez, on the other hand, is content to simply face it, cocking his head with a satisfied smirk, before repeating it out loud, while Ben neatly adds a few drops leaking from the tip of the dick. 

 

" _What Aidy and Leslie need / is a dick flavored ice cream,"_ he reads, before pausing, nodding, as if to evaluate the poetry. He offers a criticism of sort: "Gotta say, Solo, it's a bit long."

 

Aidy and Leslie are two inseparable sophomores, who have been rumored to be gay for each other for years. 

Ben doesn't have a problem with that really. One of his oldest friends (not that he has much of those), Dameron, has known he was bisexual since him and Ben were only eight playing video games in his basement. 

 

And in truth, Ben doesn't know those girls. At all. 

He only knows what's being said about them. 

And he's only trying to come up with something to write on a white wall. 

 

Words can't be that important anyway. 

Nothing really matters in the end. 

 

What has him blinking, as he's adding a few more details to the whole thing here and there, isn't a sudden slam of the door or a shout.  
  
It's the sudden silence behind him, when Evan's laugh comes to sharp stop. 

 

Ben freezes, sharpie very still in his hand, hovering an inch from the wall. 

He turns around very slowly. 

 

Lopez displays an expression of pure anguish. Evan gulps next to him, his eyes cast down. 

 

...her hand still on the door she silently opened wide, Holdo stands immobile behind him, looking at him, her face completely blank.

 

Used to his bullshit, and so very tired of it.

Her eyes shift to read what he just wrote.  
  
  
Holdo, their Principal.  
  
  
Who's also known around the school for being a lesbian, among other things.  
  
  
Her jaw works slightly, but apart from that, nothing transpires through her facade.  
  
  
He's so much taller than her at his age already, strong from his running training -but a teen, still, his muscles slender, and even his square shoulders can't hide how intimidated he feels -or more accurately, how fucking embarrassed.  
  
Much less for what he wrote, than for being caught that easily in the first place.  
  
  
But eventually, his face falls with resignation.  
  
  
Gone is his fear, gone is the shame.  
  
  
Whatever. Anything might as well happen to him. He doesn't care.

 

And he won't bother trying to share the blame either. 

 

 

He knows how close Lopez came to be expelled last year, and seeing how his face has turned his freshly tanned skin white as a sheet, he's not about to snitch and bring him down with him.  
  
One of them is more than enough. 

 

He just wished he got to show Holdo his true talent. He can draw a dick much better than Lopez can.

 

"It's two fifteen," she starts, her voice deceptively calm and even, "you're not in class. The hallways are empty --and I can hear you guffaw  _all the way from reception_."  
  
  
She pauses, before muttering, staring at Ben.  
  
  
"...if I didn't know any better, I'd think you're trying to get caught."  
  
  
Another pause, but this time she seems to wait for him to say something.

 

Ben remains silent, letting things unfold, until she finally speaks again:  

 

"...you know the way to my office, Solo."  
  
  
  
  
Of course, it _had_ to happen one of the only days during the year where his father's home.  
  
  
That's how they both end up with Han shouting at him for any passerby to see.  
  
  
He's so caught up in those thoughts, and so overwhelmed by the rage spreading in his chest in place of the hurt he was feeling two minutes ago, that he doesn't notice  _her_  the whole time he dumbly stands there, on the sidewalk where his father's car was parked. 

 

 

She's a few feet on his left, slightly behind him, near a large tree that must have kept her hidden from his sight when he was walking down the path leading to the main entry, not that he would have noticed her anyway, busy as he was getting yelled at by his father. 

The night's not falling yet -not at this hour in mid-september- but it's late enough that most of the students of Mountain Springs High School have left the premises.  
  
  
For some reason, because of the wind in the leaves maybe, he turns and sees her.

He can make out a few facts about her. Looks like she's a senior too, but could be younger, brown hair pulled in a pony tail, plain simple t-shirt with plain simple shorts, white tennis shoes and a not so confident demeanor. 

When he looks at her directly, eyes black with shame and anger equally, she hurries to avert her own eyes, but not fast enough for him not to see the pity there, and most importantly, the discomfort -the discomfort she feels that she had to witness this.

 

_He instantly hates her._

 

 

Instead of wasting a single word on her, he walks past her, his jaw clenched, unable to bear her presence another second -and starts walking home.  
  
  
  
  
They don't face each other for another four days.  

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song:
> 
>  
> 
> [Fuel to fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqZGvkF00DI)
> 
>  
> 
> "Do you want me on your mind or do you want me to go on?  
> I might be yours as sure as I can say  
> Be gone be faraway.
> 
> Roses on parade, they follow you around  
> Upon your shore as sure as I can say  
> Be gone be faraway."


	2. Life's truly unfair

 

Tray in hand, Evan prompts Ben to look the other way with a movement of his chin, and a small smirk : "Poor bitch."

They're standing at the counter, picking their small chocolate milk cartons.

Ben looks over, and spots all the way on the other side of the cafeteria, a girl with the yellow vest on.

It's noon, the busiest hour, on a Friday, the busiest day here at MS High school.

She's on canteen duty.

Poor bitch indeed.

 

Students on canteen duty are made to wear a neon yellow vest, like workers on the road, to signal everyone they'll exceptionally be in charge of cleaning everything up for an hour and a half during lunch. 

It's nice for the janitor.

They have to pick up every plastic bottle, can, wrapper they can find on the ground and on the tables, pick up the abandoned trays then throw everything in the bins -like it should have been done in the first place by the person who left it there.

If anyone pours or drops anything anywhere -some  _Sunny D_ , mashed potatoes, a pizza- the student in charge of canteen duty has a mop, a bucket, and  _chop chop_.   
  
Ben has been assigned to canteen duty a handful of times. Which just goes to show how far he's pushed the limits of every teachers here. Students don't get assigned to canteen duty over misunderstandings.   
  
Overall a student wearing the yellow neon vest is a rare sight. Teachers don't resort to that punishment lightly.

There's a humiliating aspect to it that you simply don't get with a plain detention.

Most students rarely take full advantage of whoever's on canteen duty, because they dread the day they'll find themselves in their shoes. In theory, nobody purposefully leaves a messy table to add to their peer's load of work.

Ben, though, doesn't care about that, because he's used to canteen duty by now. He'll likely be assigned to it a few more times before the school year ends.

His little schoolmates certainly wouldn't try anything with him among all people. Everybody's been very careful whenever he's worn the neon yellow vest.

 

Ben hums, and looks back down at his tray. "Try not to make her life more difficult," he tells Evan, talking about the girl.

 

"What d'you mean?"

 

"You eat like a pig."

 

Evan is a blond, pink skinned skater who laughs over nothing. He's a simple boy with simple needs, he rarely thinks about the consequences, but he's not mean spirited. He laughs about other people as much as he does about himself. He tries his best in school, restricts his idiotic self to only manifest outside of the classroom and attentively listens to his teachers -but he "barely gets there". 

Lopez puts a plate of pasta on his tray, and slides it on the counter, joining them, looking for a place to sit over everyone's head: "Where to?"

He's a dark-skinned boy who's into hip-hop -a hardcore fan of Aaliyah and Tupac and whose inner nerd only shows when he's sure nobody's looking. He's all over Spiderman and collects comics, that kind of shit.

 

The three of them aren't the worst kids, would say their parents, but... they're not the best either.

Him and Lopez, particularly, share that desillusion about life at school. And life outside of school. They don't talk about it, but Ben feels it in the way they laugh. They don't laugh like Evan does.

 

They forget all about the poor bitch the whole meal, and they really wouldn't have paid attention to her hadn't she been close enough for Ben to place her.

 

She's sweeping something a few tables away when it happens. Despite her head being down Ben can definitely make out that, it's  _her_ , the unfortunate witness of his father's outburst.

 

The first thing that comes to his mind is that life's truly unfair.

 

Considering what he's done a few days ago, it's hard to imagine that she's done something worse, yet she's ended up in charge of canteen duty when all he got was detention -in addition to repainting the wall, naturally (all expenses being his parents' responsability -Han was delighted). Not to mention that teachers usually tend to be somewhat merciful at the beginning of the school year. Someone must have made an example of her.

 

He forgot about her. How weird.

 

MS High school is a big school, considering the size of the town, and the number of people who live here. It counts roughly a thousand students, a lot of them who've known each other since kindergarten, the others more or less able to tell who's who through someone's brother or sister, church or soccer.

 

So it's always a surprise to see a new face. Because he's pretty sure he's never seen her around before.

 

And he maybe wouldn't have remembered that he hated her, if she hadn't spotted him in return. She picks her head up, her eyes empty, until they fall on him.

 

She swallows, blinks rapidly, then averts her gaze.

 

A replay of her reaction that evening, when he looked back at her after his father drove away.

Embarrassment. Pity.

 

It puts him in an instant rage.

 

Like most things he hides it inside, and keeps it hidden, waiting for her to inevitably get closer.

 

In the meantime he looks down at his tray.

He's already eaten everything, such a shame. But his chocolate milk box is still intact.

So he'll do with what he's got.

 

Carefully, Ben opens it, and slowly pours all the milk on his tray, crushing it in his hand when it's almost empty to be sure not a single drop is left inside.

The milk spreads around his plate, covering the entirety of the tray. 

Evan opens his mouth to maximum capacity, eyes wide, then barks a laugh. "What the fuck, Solo??"

Lopez only smirks.

 

The anger and humiliation Ben feels at the memory of his father's words must simply make him look focused and determined from the outside, his movements patient, precise.

Only when he looks up does he see that she's standing there, watching him do, her lips slightly parted in disbelief.

He takes it as his cue to speak.

 

"I'm such a clutz," he starts flatly without blinking, his voice barely above the noise, but she hears him, because she twitches at his words. "Would you care to carry this to the bin?"

He's short of being cut off by Evan's burst of hilarity. But again, she heard him.

She heard him good. Her face doesn't show pity anymore -not at all.

 

Still, she doesn't falter, stands there staring at him, jaw clenched, fist tightening on the mop.

He slowly gets up.

 

Putting all his focus on his hands, he picks his tray up, the pool of milk swaying left and right at the slightest movement. His eyes go back up on her:

"I'm afraid if I do it myself I'll just make it worse."

 

To illustrate, he tilts his tray a bit, pouring some on the ground, making the implicit threat a bit clearer.

 

Usually there's at least one teacher in charge of watching the students during lunch hour. Usually.

It's just his luck that no one's there for her today. There must be a world, out there, where seventeen year old students don't need a teacher to make sure they behave like decent human beings.

Not that the vigilance of one person is ever enough to prevent things like this to happen, but who knows.

Someone could have found the scene strange, and intervened.  
  


Instead he's there, patiently staring back at her, watching her eyes get darker and darker.

 

And she surprises him. She does.

 

A few steps are enough for her to close the distance between them. At no point during the three seconds it takes for her to get to him, does he believe that she does it to comply, given the look on her face.

Still, he doesn't expect her to send a punch to his tray from below, flipping it out of his grasp and sending a good deal of its content on his shirt, face and a bit on his jeans too. The plastic plate and the tray fall in a clatter on the floor.

Spunky bitch.

 

Evan is wheezing. The canteen doesn't go completely silent like it happens in movies. But the boys and girls sitting at the nearby tables have their eyes on them.

Nevertheless, Ben has managed not to show any sign of surprise, nor any kind of reaction afterwards, barely sighing like he's bored. Not a difficult task, because he truly doesn't feel much, if anything.

Affection makes him uncomfortable.

Pity and good intentions make him sick.

 

Aggression he can take anyday.

 

She's still trying to stare him down, teeth clenched, but, unless he's imagining it, she's holding her breath.

Bracing herself for what's to come?

 

He's looking back down at her, and she makes a point not to back away.

He won't do anything to her, but she doesn't know that.

Others might have told her to watch herself around him. Strange how everyone seem to forget that he's never been in a fight.

Intimidation has always been enough for people not to push him too far -not that he's ever tried very hard to intimidate anyone.

That's just one of the things that radiates from him.

People don't like to be around him. Not strangers, not his peers. Not his parents.

It was true when he was a boy, and it only got truer over the years -especially now, given his size, and maybe his whole demeanor too.

 

Then again, that might not be fear, what he sees in her eyes.

 

He licks the milk off his lips pointedly, humming like one would to appreciate the taste, before vaguely gesturing to the milk on the floor.

"Guess who's gonna have to clean this mess?"

 

She's shaking a bit. Her eyes are a touch wet.

She blinks over and over again, looking at the milk on the floor.

 

_Furious? Hurt?_

 

Doesn't matter.

 

She certainly doesn't feel sorry for him now.

 

Ben reaches for the hem of his wet shirt, pulls on it and wrings it, adding a few drops to the rest of the milk at his feet for show.

Lopez comments dryly: "You always make things so interesting, Solo... What an experience."

 

When Ben steps out of his mess and passes her, both Evan and Lopez get up to follow him.

 

Leaving her to stare at the milk through wet eyes -while others around stare at her instead.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [False Astronomy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPlpXor5B0)


	3. Good hurt

In class, Ben doesn't talk back, doesn't crack any joke, doesn't chat with anyone. He doesn't try to get anyone's attention, because for the most part, he's got it, whether he deserves it or not. So he sits at the back of the classroom and just zones out for a few hours.

He remembers teachers would check on him when he was younger, would have him participate, would try to wake him up. They don't do that anymore.

They just let him sit at the back of the room, and focus on the ones among their students who actually give a fuck.

So if Ben didn't noticed the past weeks that him and canteen duty girl shared a class,  _English class_ , it can only have to do with that hard habit he has to put his mind on hold. 

He sees her come in and settle down one day, not too far from where he's sitting -not by choice, clearly: she arrived too late to pick  another seat- and he does a discreet double-take.

Hair parted in the middle, very straight and barely brushing her shoulders, jean shorts and a t-shirt too large for her that she cut the sleeves off to turn it into a tank top of sort. White tennis on her feet.

He wasn't aware up until that point that they shared a class, but apparently  _she_  was, because she pointedly doesn't look at him, her nose even frowning in distaste when she passes him -doing so  _quickly_ , as if to be sure not to breathe the same air as him.

It doesn't shake him all that much, and he forgets about her quite easily for the rest of that day. 

From that moment on though, he actually notices her when she's nearby. 

Turns out they cross paths quite often, whether it's because MS High school is not as large as one might believe, or most likely because the more he spots her among others the more she's easier to spot. 

He sees her from afar in the gym, in the schoolyard, or passes her in English class. Plenty of occasions to see that she takes at heart to avoid him at all costs.

Everywhere he goes, if she can, she leaves, and if she can't leave, she resolutely looks the other way and obviously doesn't spare him a single word.

Good.

She won't be the first nor the last.

The first few times he notices, he laughs about it -a quiet, genuine laugh. Not to mock her, but rather as an acual reaction to the surreal aspect of the situation. 

Then, his laughs sound more like disbelieving huffs -until he doesn't laugh anymore, and tries to only focus the best he can on not paying attention to her. 

 

One afternoon though, in English class, she actually has to sit a row from him, on his right. She was almost late again. Not that he noticed it's a habit of hers. 

He's set on ignoring her back, as usual, but his eyes wander at some point. She's bent over her planner, writing something down -but something else catches his eyes. On the cover, she taped a magazine picture. 

It takes him a second or two to recognize the characters there.

A second or two before he's completely overwhelmed. 

 

_Rowf and Snitter._

 

He tears his gaze away from it, afraid that if he doesn't he'll get sucked into the image. 

 _It brings him back so hard_. He forgot about that movie. How is that even possible?

He watched  _The Plague dogs_  over and over  _and over_  when he was a kid -until his eyes fucking bled. 

He forces his brain to wake up, as he tries to remember what exactly the story was about. As a little boy, a lot of it must have gone over his head completely. 

All he has are vague images coming back to him, of a scar on a dog's skull, the shape of an island before the credits, a fox. 

He tries harder but that's all that comes back to mind, along with gut wrenching feelings he can't place and doesn't know what exactly they associate with. 

He glances at her. She's looking straight ahead, attentively listening to the teacher, oblivious to the blow she sent his way. 

 

He hopes he can find the VHS somewhere at home, suddenly in a rush to watch it again. It's been years, and a single picture of it melt his brain into a mess of nostalgia and good hurt, so he can't imagine what wacthing the actual movie can do to him. 

 

He's praying  Leia hasn't discarded it, the way she throws everything away in the house that hasn't been used in over a year.

That's barely an exaggeration. 

No matter what, there's never enough room in her eyes. She's suffocating in her own house, gasping for air, and all she's found to fix that is throw things away. Tidying up. 

It reached an extreme the day she asked him if he had any use of the medals he won with his basketball team when he was little. 

Medals aren't supposed to be useful. They're not meant to be anything except pinned to the wall. 

She got the message and let him keep them. 

But he looked everywhere for a few drawings he made when he was eight, and he couldn't find a single one. 

 

Sometimes it feels like he never existed. 

 

 _The Plague dogs_.

 

 

In that moment he actually wishes he could talk to her. Not that he'd have much to say. 

 

But... has she seen  _The fox and the hound_?

 

 _...Dumbo_?

 

 _The last unicorn_?

 

 

There must be another world out there, where they didn't meet the way they did in this one, and where he's able to ask her why she put that picture there, and where she lends him a copy of the movie. 

 

...in this world, he just chews the inside of his cheek. 

 

 

They're walking in the hallway to his Spanish class later on with Lopez, and his mind is still chasing the smallest memory it can find of that fucking movie. 

 

"Lopez."

 

"Hhm?"

 

"...do you know the movie  _The Plague dogs_?"

 

Lopez makes a pout.

"Mmmh --doesn't ring a bell, no." 

 

That's the right title, isn't it? He hopes?

 

"There's like --a fox? Dogs escape from a place where... scientists make experiences on them--" He stops a second. He's met with a face, now. "There are like, rabbits too, and... Do you see what I mean, or...?"

 

Lopez huffs a laugh: "Uh,  _no_. Don't think I've ever seen that one."

 

Silence. 

 

"Why d'you ask?"

 

Ben runs a hand over his face to come back to his senses, or maybe to hide what's plainly there for anyone to see. 

"No reason."

 

Lopez doesn't insist.

"Skatepark later?"

 

"No, I have to train right after."

 

"... with Dameron?"

 

Ben nods. 

 

Lopez and Dameron have never exchanged a single word, yet for some reason the former can't stand the latter. Ben can't imagine it's about jealousy, that because Lopez doesn't have many friends he would feel threatened by Dameron; it sounds ridiculous, still Ben truly doesn't see what else it could be. 

Lopez works his jaw a bit, then mutters: " ... _'kay_ , see you."

 

Dameron and Ben go way back. 

Their parents were friends before they were born, and although him and Poe never hung out at school outside of their training, they've spent hours and hours in his basement, his backyard or in Dameron's room, to play on his Nintendo, listen to his CDs, or jump like lunatics in his inflatable swimming pool.

 

They used to share secrets. They don't anymore. 

Dameron's the closest thing to a sibling he'll ever have. 

 

"First we make a stop?" Dameron asks him later. "I've been assigned a paper with this girl -everyone got paired up, and we're supposed to meet at her locker."

 

Ben shrugs.

 

He's not that nonchalant when they approach said locker. 

 

Canteen duty girl. 

 

_...oh for fuck's sake._

 

He stares at her as they get closer, but  _her_  eyes pass only a second on him. She's putting some books away in her locker, and it's terrifyinghow _quickly_  she recovers. 

Dameron talks to her as if he's known her his whole life, nothing surprising here -and she drinks his smile and his kind eyes right up, comfortable with him right away. 

Again, nothing surprising here. 

 

He gotta say, she does an outstanding job at acting like he's invisible -it seems like she's getting better at it with practice.

  
He does feel like he doesn't exist.

 

Maybe that's another reason why he stares at her -because he can do so from up close for the first time since the canteen incident, and it's like he does it from behind a tainted glass. He doesn't even pay attention to what they're saying.

 

She smiles. At Dameron.

 

A genuine smile. Not something he'll ever get to receive from her.

 

He doesn't get into why those thoughts even cross his mind.

 

"Are we going, or...?" He asks very suddenly, irritated -cutting Dameron off.

 

She doesn't react, perfectly immune to the sound of his voice, along with everything coming from him.

Dameron quirks an eyebrow at him. "Um, sure, Solo," before turning to her : "See you this week-end, Rey?"

 

... Rey.

 

She smiles at him again: "Okay then!"

 

Ben's now staring at the word  _dick_  written in all caps on the locker right next to hers. 

 

A reminder of what he himself wrote on the bathroom wall. 

 

They arrive at the running tracks five minutes later. Dameron crouches and hands him a piece of paper. 

"Hold this for me."

 

"...what's that?" Ben mutters, frowning, eyeing it. The sun is in his eyes.

 

Dameron's rummaging through his backpack.

"Her schedule," he says, stopping to look up at him: "--you know, the whole reason I had to meet with her in the first place?"

 

He looks back down at his backpack. 

 

Ben's eyes open good. 

 

 _Rey Jones_.

She takes a class called Music Theory. Along with three other optional courses. Ben wasn't even aware there were that many total.

Her Monday, Thursday and Friday are  _packed_. 

 

"Solo?"

 

Ben looks at Dameron. 

"What?"

 

"... can you give me the schedule back?"

 

He does. 

 

 

At home, he goes through everything. His room, of course, although he's sure he'd know if there was a chance he'd find it there; the living-room, naturally -then the garage, then the attic, then what used to be Leia's office. 

He doesn't find  _The Plague dogs_.

 

He can't find any of his childhood's VHS, actually.  

 

 

There's a note on the fridge, telling him not to wait, and a plate on the counter for him to heat up. 

But he's not hungry. 

 

Instead, he goes up to his room to lie down. 

And proceeds to attempt a second time to remember scenes of the movie.

What comes best to mind, though, is the picture Jones taped to her planner. 

 

He stares at his ceiling, and the ceiling stares back, as he imagines how a conversation could have gone between them, had they met under other circumstances. 

That's the fourth time he does that just today. 

 

A conversation. If he was capable of having one with anyone to begin with. He probably wouldn't have talked to her long enough to call it a conversation. 

She fucking taped that picture there, that movie must mean something to her? He just wishes he could tell her _just so you know, that movie was my whole life, when I was seven. I watched it eating my cereals, and again while drawing in the afternoon, alone, and then I would have dreams about it. Nightmares, actually._  

 

It's a desperate need he has, and he can't explain why, to point at the connection there, that him and her share now, and that they didn't have before that picture came into sight. She's mirroring something he thought had been buried a long time ago. 

If he had been able to express it on the moment, it'd be behind him now.

 

Instead he's left to  _obsess_  over it. 

 

He's a fucking loser. 

 

 

That frustration with himself is about to get stronger, though, because without thinking too much, he sits up slowly, and looks at his desk.

He finds an old handout there, turns it over, and grabs a pencil. 

 

At first, he sits at his desk to draw a few details he remembers about  _Rowf_  and  _Snitter_ , what he thinks are shots of the movie. 

But when he's done, he ends up writing these words underneath: 

 

_I've watched The Plague dogs a million times when I was little_

_it was weird for me to be reminded of it when I saw_ _the picture you keep with you_

_made me happy and sad_

 

 

...then, before he knows it:

 

_sometimes I resent people_

_and I don't even really know why_

 

 

 

He winces, frowning,  and throws the piece of paper away. 

 

 

 

_\---what the fuck is wrong with him?_

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The look](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPKJUzkTt6Y)


	4. Fate is funny and cruel

 

Ben keeps thinking about the things he can't say to Rey Jones. 

And because he keeps thinking about what he'd say to her if he hadn't lost the privilege to do so, he does it again. 

He writes down stupid shit, meant to be read by no one. 

 

_I like the rain more than I like the sun_

_I've never been to the ocean_

 

The first few times, he systematically throws the notes away, and cringes so hard internally he thinks he gets close to split a tooth one time. 

He's not crazy enough to write all that nonsense  _at school_.

 

If someone caught him doing that, even without knowing who it's supposed to be adressed to, he'd desintegrate. 

What he says to her, on paper, isn't intense, or poetic, or meaningful in anyway, it's hurried and confused.

 

But that's the thing, isn't it? He senses that that's what makes him uncomfortable, even though he's the only one to know about it.

The random, messy train of his thoughts laid down without any main theme and coherence whatsoever, simply makes it so ---intimate. 

So no, he doesn't take the risk to bring that habit to school, and leaves his deranged self at home. 

 

 _...until he fucking doesn't anymore_ , and finds himself writing all of those things down at school anyway.

In class. On the bus. Sitting at one of the outdoor tables. When he's alone, of course.

 

Because for some reason, he becomes scared that he's gonna forget what he wanted to say to her, if he doesn't write it down.

 

_\--how fucking insane is that??_

 

 

Overall, he doesn't have too much to say. Some sentences are cut in their middle, some don't even have any verb in it, and a few times, because he doesn't feel the need to indulge this new habit for a whole day, he actually thinks he's cured; that it's passed him, like a fever. 

 

But then, he hears her apologize to someone, sees her in her soccer attire a Wednesday afternoon; or a teacher calls her name, or Dameron mentions her--

_\--or there are chocolate milk boxes at lunch--_

 

...or he gets home, sees his father five minutes and barely exchanges a word with him before he leaves-

 

And there he goes. 

Climbing the stairs to his room to find a piece of paper. 

 

 

He doesn't even like writing. It's a fucking drag, takes too much time to get to the end of a thought, and he never finds the right words anyway. 

So for the most part, he just states facts. 

_I hate seafood_

 

_I was good at math once_

_it's been said before but school is fucking boring_

 

Things she would have been surprised to learn about him, maybe. 

Things he wishes he could ask her.  _Does she walk to school? Does she take the bus?_

 

Then, sometimes, he has to admit it gets a bit too real:

 

_I got a rottweiler for christmas when I was 7_

_cried a whole month when I was told a year later that she died_

_I recently learned that my dad actually gave her away_

_my parents weren't at home enough to feel like they would have properly taken care of her_

 

 

... _yeah_ , he'd certainly never tell her that -or anyone, for that matter. 

 

He's not that expressive, most of the time. Finds he much prefers to keep it short. 

 

_never can decide what to feel about finding my parents are home_

 

No need to elaborate on that. 

 

 

_This seriously needs to stop._

 

After doing this for two weeks he understands that if he doesn't watch out he's gonna keep going until it's too late and there's no turning back.

 

So he does stop. He does. For two days in a row. 

 

On the first of those two days, Miller abruptely stands up in the middle of English class, hissing, shoulders up and teeth clenched, his chair almost falling back.

Everybody turns their heads to him, eyebrows up. 

 

" _There's a fucking spider,"_  he spits at no one in particular before pleading: "Someone fucking kill it!" -eliciting a laugh or two.

 

"Language, Miller!" scolds Davis, the teacher -that's all he has to say about it. 

 

But Miller is obviously shook, and he pays attention to nothing but the spider on the wall near his desk. 

He really doesn't like spiders. 

 

In the meantime, Garcia got up, with a book in her hands to rescue Miller and slay his enemy. 

 

Since Ben's eyes are on the scene, he doesn't see Jones stand up, doesn't even pay attention when Davis weakly protests that  _there isn't any need for everybody to get involved_.  

 

With great caution, Jones bends to catch the spider in her hands. Garcia and Miller both display the most intense expression of disgust. 

When she looks up at the windows on the side of the classroom, she seems at a loss about what to do. Her hands are busy. Also, she doesn't know it, but the first windows don't open -only the last three do. 

 

Davis gets impatient. 

"Take care of it already, we're not gonna spend the whole hour tending to a spider."

 

That prompts him. 

Before he can think better of it, Ben gets up, and with two long strides gets to a window at the back of the class. He reaches for the handle, gives it a sharp tug when it resists him a bit -then steps aside and opens the window wide. 

 

When he looks back at her, she's her eyes down, her hands still cupped around the spider.

Even all the way from the other side of the classroom, he can see her mouth's in a frown. 

Clearly not happy that he's the one who got up for her. 

 

There's only a second of hesitation before she moves, but it still makes her reluctance evident. 

 

With quick steps, she walks up to him, keeping her focus on anything but him.

Meanwhile, he works his jaw, eyes cast down, waiting patiently for her to be done -as his heart hammers at the irrational fear that he might unintentionally give away his secret somehow, if she gets too close. 

 

She carefully frees the spider, without a word or a glance at him. 

Then can't get away from him any faster. 

 

He didn't expect her to thank him, or acknowledge him in any way. It sure would have unsettled him greatly if she had. 

...funny how, despite things turning out as expected, it still hurts. 

 

One can never be prepared, apparently. 

So odd, given how well he's been trained at rejection over the years -he truly thought that sort of treatment couldn't get to him anymore.

 

He thinks he manages not to show anything, and closes the window swallowing it all down -before returning to his seat. 

 

It's a cold shower of sorts. Just what he needed.

A reminder that he's actually never talked to her.

And that he doesn't know her. At all. 

 

This little game of his hasn't taught him anything about her, it's just made it clear what he would have liked to know about her, sure, and that he would have liked to talk to her if it had been possible-and that's it. 

That's actually it. 

  

 

He's unaware in that moment that he'll get another reality check, as soon as the next day. 

 

Naturally, it happens during English class. 

 

The way an animal senses danger, he stiffens when he hears Davis announce that he's decided to pair everyone up for the next assignment. 

A big one, that they'll have to turn in two months. 

 

_\--what's with teachers and pairing students up??_

 

 

Ben sits up, feeling his whole body tense. 

What are the chances, that exactly what he fears will happen actually happens?

 

Jones goes through each chapters of the book they're studying -Ben isn't even sure what book that is- reading from a list he prepared. 

 

It only takes him seven tries. 

Fate is funny and cruel that way. 

 

"Jones, with Solo, chapter seven, subject: Money," says Davis, his eyes down on the list, before looking up at them both above his glasses.

 

Ben's blood freezes. Rey's head jerks up.

 

"--alright?" Davis asks for confirmation. 

 

Ben clenches his jaw when he hears Jones intervene with a strangled voice: 

 

" _Uh_ , I-I, --sir,  _please_ , can I be paired up with someone else?"

 

...that certainly gets the attention of the entire class. Hearing her acknowledge it out loud sharpens the pang, too -makes the whole experience so much more interesting. 

 

Ben holds his breath.

 

Davis doesn't keep her waiting:

"No."

 

But just as he's about to go on with his list, Jones interrupts him: 

"Please, Sir, I-- just ... _anybody else_ , pair me up with anybody else. Please."

 

Ben tries his best to keep his eyes on his desk in front of him.

 

Desperate not to show any kind of reaction.

His breathing actually gets labored, but he thinks he remains quiet nonetheless. 

 

It's just a moment to pass. It'll pass. 

 

Davis frowns at Jones. 

"I've had a look at your past performances in English, Jones, and I don't think you should be picky about your partners," Davis tells her, casually, frowning his nose in distaste at the mention of said performances. "...matter of fact, you could learn a thing or two from Solo."

 

It's that easy for Ben to be completely distracted from the burn he was choking on just a few seconds ago. 

 

Because his eyes are on her, now. 

She's trying to blink away the humiliation, the same way she was blinking at the milk. Her cheeks have reddened, she's lowered her head. Why she's that affected by what Davis said, he has no idea. 

He's just trying to make sense of how that sight feels worse than the rest. _How?_

 

Another voice rises on the other side of the classroom. 

 

"I,... I don't mind teaming up with Rey."

 

Rose's hand's up, despite the fact that she spoke without being invited to. Rey barely dares looking up. 

 

Ben swallows, hanging on Davis' lips. 

 

The teacher sighs - _loudly_. 

 

"Martin?" he asks, adressing Rose's partner. 

 

Martin makes a pout. 

"Yeah, I mean... I don't care."

 

Davis shifts his attention to Ben, an eyebrow up: "Solo, is that a problem?" 

 

Ben only quickly shakes his head in silence, before looking back at Rey. 

 

She's her head down, a hand on her forehead. 

Hiding her eyes. 

 

 

The image doesn't leave him alone, well after they've all left for their next classes. 

 

 

How sad is it, that he made her hate him so much he can't even say a word or two to comfort her now?

 

Very sad, feels like. He can't shake it off.

 

 

The hallway's empty when he passes her locker. Because he systematically looks its way whenever he passes it now. 

 

It's right next to the one that says:  _DICK_

 

But this time, he stops to look at it for a good while.

 

Thinking back: how reckless of him. Someone could have seen him standing there. 

And he wishes that'd been the case. 

 

He maybe would have walked on, and not pondered for a full minute whether it's possible to slide, or rather stick a small, folded piece of paper in the thin, thin vertical slit near the lock -that space between the door and the rest of the locker. 

 

Before he knows it, he stops pondering. 

 

 

And actually writes a note, that he leaves at that exact spot.

 

 

 

 

_don't mind Davis he's a loser_

_can't make peace with what his life has become_

 

 

_thank you for saving me_

 

_the spider_

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [...I'm a highschool lover / and you're my favorite flavor / love is all / on my soul / you're my playground love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UfHXiQkgd8)


	5. Everybody makes mistakes

 

Why. 

 

-why, why, _why_ \--

 

...did he do that?

 

_Why the fuck???_

 

He never pays attention to what's happening in class, much less what happens in _History class_ , but he's reached a whole other level today, because he can only produce a single loop of thoughts.

 

_...why-why-why-why-why, you fucking idiot -WHY?_

 

That, coupled with an internal groan that's stretched _endlessly_ for the past two hours. And _oh_ , how it must show on his face: even Mr White has been avoiding looking at him. 

 

Lopez, who's sitting just a row away from him on his right keeps glancing at him, never for more than half a second. 

He's clever enough not to ask him what's wrong. 

 

It took Ben two minutes to write the note, stick it in the slit near the lock of Jones' locker, and walk away to his next class -his mind seemingly blank the whole time.  

 

Once in class, though, he can only sit down and think about what he's just done.

 

The first few seconds, the rational part of his brain assures him that it's no big deal, there's no way for her to know he's the one who left that note, and also, the content of the note is pretty harmless, _isn't it?_

 

...that only sounds right for the first few seconds, though. 

 

Immediately after, his head is in his hands, and his eyes are shut tight.  

 

_-Goddamn it, Jesus--motherfucking---_

 

 

It's okay.

Everybody makes mistakes.

He can get that note back, can't he?

 

Ten minutes after he sat down, too panicked to realize it's way too soon to ask, he raises his hand: 

 

"Sir, can I go to the bathroom?"

 

"No."

 

"Wh-" he starts, offended, before his eyes lift up to the clock on the wall above his teacher's head, and he clamps his mouth shut.

Then he looks at White, at the look on his face, and he remembers that, the last time he asked to go to the bathroom during one of his class, he came back twenty five minutes later. 

 

So he doesn't try anything for the next two hours.

 

When the bell rings, Ben jumps to his feet. Zipping his backpack, he mumbles to Lopez: 

"'Have to go--"

 

Lopez frowns: "Wha--where?"

 

"To run -training," Ben quickly replies, repressing an annoyed sigh. Unable to form proper sentences. 

 

"With Dameron?" he hears behind him as he zig-zags between everyone.

 

" _Yes_ , _Lopez_ , with Dameron," he shoots back with gritted teeth, and this time he can't hide his impatience. 

 

In a second he's out of the classroom. 

 

 

His only luck in all of this, is that her locker could have been placed in the middle of the main hallway, and it's not, thank God. It's near the second science building, that's mainly used for obscure optional classes.

 

Not too many people go there. 

 

Which means it would also make things awkward if someone asked him just what the fuck he's doing there, but how about he sees the glass half-full this time and just ignores that? 

 

When he gets there, there's virtually no one around, beside two nerds who pay no attention to him when they pass him.

Which is great. 

 

But there's no note. 

And that's less great.

 

 

He blinks. 

 

The piece of paper was so small, so pushed and rammed in the slit that it should have been impossible to dig it out without, say, a ruler or something, or without opening the damn locker. 

 

He'd argue it even would have been unlikely that anyone could have spotted it, unless they'd have their eyes on the lock in the first place -especially given the grey color of the lockers. White paper doesn't exactly stand out. 

 

In fact, to notice that piece of paper, you would either have to be opening the locker, or be looking for it -like him right now. 

 

Even while opening the locker, it's more likely than anything that Jones didn't pay attention to it and let it fall to the ground, without suspecting a thing. 

 

On that thought, he looks down -and doesn't find anything.

Not the note he left, and actually, not a single piece of paper, no wrapper no nothing.

 

The janitor swept it away? 

 

 

...or simpler yet. 

 

Jones found it. 

And she read it.  

 

 

He checks the locker one last time, then resigns himself to leave. He walks down the path to the schoolyard, head down, frowning, thinking. 

 

He pictures her reading it, narrowing her eyes in confusion and annoyance, before throwing it away. 

A vision that both calms him down and hurts him. 

 

Then he imagines her barely glancing at it, then crumpling it without a second thought. It hurts less. 

 

Too much uncertainty, _way too much_ , for him to not hold his breath from that moment on when he sees her, for him not to somewhat discreetly scan her face when she passes him, in the hope he'll find some clues there about what happened to that note -as if there was a way to know just by looking at her. 

 

He doesn't get many occasions to see her, but enough still to assess that, if she knows about it, her behavior hasn't changed, especially around him. 

 

But there's less anger in her jaw, in her brows, now. Not because she feels any different, he's sure. And she still avoids him at all cost. 

She must just... care less.

 

She hates him _casually_ now _._

 

 

For a week and a half, he forgets her.

 

Meaning he only thinks about her from time to time. 

 

 

After that week and a half though, he's brought to have her back at the forefront of his mind, because he's slightly late to English class with Lopez, and he has to sit where he can. 

 

...right behind her. 

 

He can see her tense up when he approaches, but overall, she does a good job at keeping her composure. 

 

Having her so close, and being able to look at her unhurried, even if only her back, her neck, her hair, makes him feel like he's stealing something, that he's getting something he's not supposed to get. 

 

He sits his back against the wall, and tries to look somewhere else. 

 

The class has barely started, when she bends a bit to her left to whisper to Devon, who's a row away from her. 

 

"I'm sorry, do you have a piece of paper? It's okay if you don't--"

 

Devon sometimes trains with him and Dameron.

 

She doesn't know that, obviously. 

Sure enough, when Devon shakes his head mouthing a _sorry_ , he immediately turns to Ben, passing on the request on her behalf:

 

"Solo, do you...?"

 

Before Ben can answer, Jones is already shaking her head at Devon.

 

"It's okay, it's okay - _forget it_ ," she hurries to say, tearing a page out of a notebook. 

 

Ben doesn't have the time to be hurt, or to smile humorlessly at the situation, because as she closes her notebook, he catches a glimpse of it. 

 

An unfolded piece of paper, that she slipped between two pages. 

 

She doesn't give him enough time to read what's written on it, and anyway he's too far for that, even that close.

 

But during those two seconds before she closes her notebook, he actually recognizes the note by its _shape._

Somehow he remembers how he teared it. 

 

He also remembers writing it with a pencil. 

 

...the note he stuck in the door of her locker. 

 

 

Of course, she didn't keep the note of _Ben Solo_. He's aware of that. She has no idea who left it. 

 

Still the whole world is suddenly thrown off balance. 

 

 

He doesn't know what to think of that. 

 

Only that he can't think about anything else now.

 

 

So at recess, he lets Evan and Lopez be loud and laugh together, while he takes out the notebook he's supposed to use for mathand puts it on his laps, hidden under the outdoor table they're sitting at.

 

For the longest time, he just stares at it.

He's surprised Lopez doesn't have anything to say about that.

 

They just leave him alone.

Good. 

  

Obviously, the situation makes it impossible for her to respond, but... for some reason, he want to ask her all kinds of questions anyway.

 

To have her know that those are the questions he would ask her if he could. 

 

That those are the questions someone wants to ask her.

 

She doesn't need to know who. 

_She wouldn't be happy to know who._

 

But he understands rather quickly that if he was in her shoes, he'd hate not to get something first.

Even if all he has to share is rather insignificant. 

 

...but something personal? 

Something true?

 

 

Finally he starts writing.

 

_when I was little_

 

_I believed that if I swallowed the kernel of a cherry_

_a cherry tree would grow inside me_

 

 

He stares at the words for a minute. Then adds right under: 

 

_I was stupid_

 

There. Sounds true enough.

 

 

He's grateful to have Lopez and Evan with him, because it keeps him from leaving the note at her locker right away.

For a moment there, he believes he's come to his senses, that he won't do it after all. 

 

He should know better. 

The second he can, he finds himself leaving the note near her lock, just like he did a week before.

 

 

And for three days, it's a sad replay of the first time.

 

He checks as soon as the next day if the note is gone, and it is. Once again, he has no way to be sure that it's means that _she_ has it. 

 

He can't exactly ask for her notebook to check in its pages if she kept the second note, can he? Assuming she found it. 

 

Her behavior doesn't change one bit. 

 

It makes him realize just how downright _silly_ it is of him, to think that leaving a note amounts to some kind of connection with her. 

 

He doesn't know what she thinks, how she feels, if she kept it this time, and really why she would keep it - _anything,_  he doesn't get to know _anything_ about her.

 

On the third day, though, he does. 

 

And it's strange to think that, if Lopez hadn't made them walk the long way to stop at the reception, they wouldn't have walked by her locker.

 

He glances at it as they do, a reflex he's had since he's discovered it was hers, and he almost does a double-take that he desperately tries to recover from in front of Lopez. He just keeps on walking not to raise any suspicion. 

 

He stops abruptely a few feet away, too abruptely for how relaxed he's supposed to be, and tells him he's got to the bathroom, that he shouldn't wait for him. 

 

Thankfully, Lopez just shrugs and walks away. 

 

Ben does go to the bathroom.

He's so paranoid he waits for the bell to ring to come out. 

 

Then, when the hallway's silent, he looks left and right, and almost runs to that damn locker.

He's afraid something's gonna keep him from getting there if he doesn't hurry. 

 

 

Essentially behaving like a bad, bad spy.

 

 

And there it is. 

 

He thought he saw something, now he's sure. 

 

It's a piece of paper, stuck near the lock. 

 

A _blue colored_ piece of paper. 

 

 

He takes his ruler out of his backpack, praying to God it's thin enough, and _it is_. With a bit of effort he dislodges the message. 

 

 

He unfolds it. The words have been written with a black pen.

 

 

 

_when I was little I thought people had to learn all the roads in the world by heart_

_to pass a driver's license_

 

_naturally I wasn't confident at all that I'd ever get to drive_

 

_how can a spider swallow a kernel?_

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Change your heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOVECbr-vsc)


	6. Fill in the blanks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Please please please_ , whatever you do, 
> 
> be sure that I read each comment, that they make me impossibly happy, and that I should reply to them very soon (if not tonight)
> 
> Thank you so so much for reading  
> I hope you enjoy that chapter 
> 
> The spider

 

Rey tries to listen. She really tries. 

 

Sitting at her desk, a pen in her hand, eyes on the teacher, she tries. 

 

But no matter how much effort she puts into this, her focus always shifts. Always. 

 

It's a miracle she hasn't given up yet, after all those years. 

 

She doesn't even care about getting her high school degree, she truly doesn't. It's not that important to her. 

She sure wouldn't get a better life out of it, and she's definitely not going to college.

 

But it would hurt her too much, to have that failure confirm everything her teachers and her parents have always said about her. 

 

It shouldn't matter, yet she'd hate for them to be right - _so much_. 

 

So at least she acts like she listens. She takes  _some_  notes.

 

She tries. 

 

When Mr Davis gives back some small tests they took a week before, Rey takes hers and hides it as fast as she can. 

 

She doesn't even  _glance_  at her grade. She just shoves it in her backpack and doesn't take it out until she's home. 

Not that she makes much of it there. 

 

She's had a few good grades in the past, but most of the time, she knows what to expect -in English in particular.

 

Grammar isn't a problem for her, and she can express herself just fine she thinks.

 

But then, when it comes to understand a text as a whole, makes sense out of it other than what's obvious, she chews the inside of her cheek,  frowning, staring, starting over -bending, getting her face real close to the page.

 

As if that could make her smarter.

 

Texts, chunks of texts, books -she eyes them with a knot in her belly. 

 

She doesn't like reading.  _God_  she doesn't like that. She reads every sentence of every page of every book she's forced to study at school at least twenty times or something. 

 

She hates it. 

 

It's a miracle she's made it this far without repeating a grade.

 

Looking around, everyone seems to be doing just fine.   

Her mother says that she just has to try harder. 

 

...lately though, God knows it's only been more difficult for her to focus. 

She just spends the whole class waiting for that damn bell to ring. 

 

And when it does, she really hopes she maintains the illusion that she's calm inside. 

 

As opposed to  _curiously excited_  to go to her locker. 

 

 

When she gets to said locker after a long morning that day,  _there it is._

 

It's the same note she left the day before, but placed slightly higher above the lock. 

 

 

She fumbles a bit with her keys, glancing once or twice to people passing behind her, and opens the door -letting the note fall in her hand. 

 

_Jesus, why fold it so many times?_

 

Soon it's open. 

 

Bits of conversations all put one after the other without much connection. If anyone else read those, they wouldn't understand a thing.

 

Rey always writes with a black pen:

 

 

**_I wouldn't know I never had a pet_ **

**_do you think people will remember him in ten years?_ **

 

 

And they, whoever they are, always write back with a pencil:

 

_what pet would you have if you could have one?_

_I think. he died six months ago and people still talk about it like it happened yesterday_

 

 

...It's been going on for five weeks now. 

 

Five weeks, since she's found the first note stuck in her locker. 

 

The tone is usually very conversational -strangely so, in fact.

 

As if what they were doing is only the most natural thing in the world. 

 

But sometimes, that person on the other side of the notes unexpectedly shifts the tone of the exchange -in a radical way. It always catches her off guard.

 

 

_I'm scared I'll never leave this town_

 

 

Yet, somehow, she falls into step effortlessly. 

 

 

 

_**you should know every town is the same** _

_**skatepark, church, liquor store** _

_**there's no point in going anywhere** _

**_people are the same and life is shit no matter where you go_  **

 

 

Everytime Rey's anxious she went too far, the spider proves itself to her.

 

 

_thank you I feel better_

 

 

...a depressed, sarcastic spider with a solid sense of humor -who makes her hide her smile into her locker like an insane person.

 

Still it doesn't come easy to her the first times.

 

Quite the occasion to be vulnerable, to say those things to someone, even seemingly unimportant, little nothings, when they know who she is, while she has no idea who she's talking to. 

 

 

Yet she does it a first time, leaving a note-

\--and a second, and another time after that, and _again_ -until she goes to bed every day thinking about the note she left, and wakes up thinking about the note she'll receive. 

 

She sure as fuck doesn't know where that trust comes from. 

 

Time and time again life has shown her that people are a lot of things, and trustwhorty is by no mean at the top of the list. 

 

Is it easier this time, because the spider always returns the note no matter what? Is that why she feels more at ease?

 

The same piece of paper is used by both of them to ask and reply, and when there's no room left on it, another one is provided to continue the conversation.

 

But no matter what, whoever's writing to her always sticks the old notes back into her locker.

Rey has all of them with her. 

 

 

She thinks she'll end up throwing them away. 

 

For now, there's no harm in keeping them for a while, is there?

 

To read them a second time, or a third time. 

 

 

It's someone from English class, she knows that much, because they saw her pick up that spider. 

Then get humiliated by Davis. 

 

 

On several occasions she takes a minute to observe her classmates. 

See if by chance she can get any clue. 

 

But all it does, is that she finds herself projecting the notes onto anyone she sees. Some catch her staring and she quickly averts her gaze. 

 

 

There's only one person she won't let her eyes linger on in fact. 

 

 

She's learned her lesson with Solo the first two times she dared to look at him. 

No one's ever hated her that fast. And she's never hated anyone more. 

 

What a way to start the year at a new school. 

 

Most of her classmates don't seem to seek his company too much -how surprising- and he doesn't look like he's pained by that. He certainly doesn't act like the bullies she's known in the past. 

 

She ignores him, and instead of pushing her around some more until she breaks, the way she expected him to, he's withdrawn, like a dog to its house.  

 

When the canteen episode happens, she swears to herself that she'll wait for the next occasion to throw food at him, because a day is  _bound to come_ where she'll find him eating there again, and she won't be on canteen duty this time, and he'll get to know just what it means to  _hold a fucking grudge_. 

 

She sees him sitting at a table in the canteen only three days later, though, and the anger necessary for her to care is met with...

 

...confusion. 

 

The two idiots he must call friends are having an noisy, agitated exchange right next to him. Their plates and trays are almost empty. They're taking their last bites.

 

Solo's plate, on the other hand, is full of cold food. 

 

He's sitting back in his chair, hands on his thighs.

Staring at nothing in particular, somewhere in front of him. 

 

 

For some reason,  _this_  is what brings her to settle for hating him in silence, and at a good distance. 

 

 

Because her attention is on him the day he opens the window to free the spider, she missed an opportunity to pay attention to whoever was watching her then, before deciding they'd write her a note. 

 

 

She'd like so bad to ask them who they are, but she's each time brought to consider that there must be a good reason for the anonymity -although she has hard time coming up with a single one.

 

Except maybe that that person would be ashamed to actually hang out with her.

 

\--ashamed to be seen with her.

 

 

She'd really like to think that she's just lacking self-confidence, but she's starting to believe that it's simply the truth instead. 

 

People don't like her all that much. They just don't. She doesn't smile a whole lot.

And people don't like that. 

 

Four weeks in, the spider suddenly asks her: 

 

_why on earth did you move here_

_I can't imagine you come from a place worst than this one_

 

Two letters crossed out, before another sentence follows:

 

_I really liked your shirt today_

 

 

\--a girl then?

 

Would a boy be interested in what she wears? 

 

 

_**I can lend it to you if you want** _

 

 

is what she replies. 

 

...carefully ignoring what she's been asked.

 

She means it as a bad joke, of course, because there's no real way for her to lend that shirt, if that girl wants to remain anonymous. 

 

The next day, Rey gets the note back: 

 

 

_**I can lend it to you if you want** _

 

_I don't think it's my size_

 

 

... She doesn't really pay attention to what's being said, though.

All she notices, is that the person who wrote this has been tactful enough not to insist when she's avoided answering the question about her moving here. 

Bringing her to actually answer this time. 

 

 

_**we were evicted from our last home** _

 

 

She contemplates phrasing it differently, but there really isn't any good way to present it. 

 

_**then my mom got a job here** _

_**so we moved here** _

 

 

She leaves the note at the usual spot, and for the next few hours, Rey is quite an anxious mess. She can't be sure that information will remain between them.

 

But more importantly, she's really afraid she won't get a reply this time.

 

Yet, she does. 

 

_I found my father's porn magazines when I was eleven_

_while trying to find where my parents hid my christmas presents_

_see?_

_I've been through some hardship myself_

 

 

Rey hides behind the door of her locker, lowering her head. 

Letting her eyes burn and her vision blur. 

 

...whoever this is, she's in contact with one of the kindest, most delicate persons who've ever walked the planet. 

 

She's never getting rid of that note.

Never. 

 

_**which magazines?** _

 

 

is what she writes back.

 

_hustler_

 

is the answer she gets the next day. 

 

 

She's at Rose's locker, so they can grab some of her stuff before they go find a table outside, to start on their assignment, when she sees someone coming from the corner of her eye. 

She goes rigid, and turns the other way, before warning Rose through clenched teeth, low: 

 

"...fucking  _Solo_ is coming over here."

 

Rose only has the time to blink back at her, before a large hand taps on her shoulder. 

Rey lowers her eyes, then stares at the locker. 

 

She hears Solo speak too soflty to fit what she knows of him, and she's already mad at him for that, but she remains immobile, listening despite herself until he goes away: 

 

"Rose..." he starts, "this is yours, right?"

 

Rey can't see what he's handing to Rose, but she can hear the reaction of her partner. 

 

Rose gasps the biggest gasp, before letting a relieved sigh: 

"Oh, my God,  _thank you_ , Ben... I was so scared I lost it..."

 

_Ben? Rose calls him Ben?_

 

"Thought I recognized it," Solo comments. 

 

"Thank you, thank you so much."

 

"No worries. See you Rose."

 

And he's gone. 

 

Rey doesn't understand what's going on. She keeps her eyes on the locker. 

 

She doesn't dare to look at Rose, and her face is burning. 

 

Rose is the first to speak, with a very small voice, tone apologetic, although she's got nothing to apologize for:

 

"...I understand if you don't like him, don't worry."

 

A pause. 

The silence is supposed to invite Rey to speak, but she's too busy trying to swallow down whatever's stuck in her throat. 

She understands that the heat under her skin comes at least partially from plain simple shame. 

 

From assuming that Rose hates Solo like she does, before discovering that they're actually friends. 

 

As if to comment on that thought, Rose adds with an even smaller voice: 

 

"He--he's always been nice to me."

 

And  _that_  ---that just brings to the surface exactly why Rey feels the way she feels. 

 

She says nothing, just looks down, until Rose's taken eveything she needs from her locker, and they finally get moving.

 

And after five minutes, Rey's sure she won't think about it again. 

 

She's wrong about that. 

 

She can't help but think about Solo's kindness to Rose everytime she sees him.

 

...It hurts to no end.

And she sees him way too much to remain sane. 

 

She's only brought to wonder: just what does Rose have, that would inspire him to behave with basic decency, that  _she_  doesn't possess?

 

What's so inherently wrong with her, for her to deserve being publicly humiliated instead?

 

For the longest time, it's only in the back of her head, and as days pass, she watches Solo from afar when she gets to, to find answers that don't exist. 

 

She's left to fill in the blanks. 

 

If Ben Solo didn't treat her this way because he's an asshole--

\--then why? 

 

_Why?_

 

 

... what's wrong with her?

 

It's in the back of her head, until one day she can't handle it on her own anymore. 

 

With a trembling hand, she leaves a note at her locker. 

 

 

**_I feel like_**

**_people just can't love me_ **

**_that it's just a thing about me_ **

**_I'm not loveable_ **

**_do you ever feel that way?_ **

 

 

She loses sleep over it that night.

 

But the next day, the note is back. 

 

 

Right under her message, she reads three words, written with a pencil: 

 

 

_all the time_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Words / don't come easy to me / How can I find a way / to make you see / I love you / Words don't come easy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrqQ2jYpwY)


	7. Fear and excitement

 

 

Rey's really careful not to mention Solo to Rose ever again when they meet to work together. She's careful not to mention him to anyone really, Dameron included. 

 

It can only be a good thing and help her forget about it. 

 

Better ignore completely how the renewed way she clings to the notes she receives is actually a pretty big tell on how she truthfully  _didn't_  forget about Rose and Solo's friendship at all. 

 

She waits for those notes now more eargerly than ever. 

 

And if this was the only change in her behavior that that shift in her perception of Solo had caused, it wouldn't have bothered her all that much. 

 

But no matter how deep in denial she's willing to go, there's been another radical change. 

 

She can't seem to be able to stop looking at him. 

 

Discreetly. 

 

From afar, for half a second at a time, from behind her shoulder -she looks at him. 

 

Trying to find an answer there. 

 

A lot of the time, she secretly hopes she'll catch him pushing some kid around, that he'll do something that'll help make sense of him again -but the rest of the time, she really just looks at him. 

 

When he's so far away from her that if someone caught her, she could easily pretend to be watching literaly anything else, she watches him. 

 

And when she does, he's never pushing anyone around.  

 

He's face flushed, walking down the running tracks, when she waits for Dameron to be done with his training.

 

He huffs, spits on the ground, chest heaving, eyes cast down. 

 

His t-shirt's a bit too tight around his shoulders and armpits. 

 

Usually, he's got that not yet climate-appropriate oversized grey sweatshirt on, with what looks like a white t-shirt underneath -she can see its collar around the base of his long neck- and a black, knee-length baggy pair of shorts that'd be ideal to skate? Or play basketball, maybe, and she doesn't know if he does either of those things.

 

He always rolls down his white socks around his ankles, and wears them with a pair of black, low-cut converse-like shoes. She hates that she's noticed that.

 

In class, his scowl morphs into a pout more often than not, bringing his mouth forward slightly, his jaw clenching. 

 

His hair is constantly falling in his eyes. It annoys her just looking at it.

Two ears poking through his dark locks. 

 

Boyish in every way, except for his size.

With a way of walking, standing, that would usually associate with a quiet temperament. Slow, focused ways  _that aren't the ways of a bully._

 

She sees all of this, then remembers how he treated her. 

 

Often ending up huffing in irritation through her nose, a lump in her throat; gritting her teeth, rolling her eyes;  hugging her own body to protect herself from this new light Rose's unknowingly forced her to see him under. 

 

Ultimately, that thing she was supposed to forget is all that's on her mind. 

 

She's about to leave the house one day after lunch, and she's thinking about him again.

Her long, droppy, dark green skirt reaches her ankles, so she pulls it up her knees to put her combat boots on -they're old, a neighbor gave them to her at the last place they rented, but they're more comfortable than most of the shoes she owns.

 

She's still chewing the last bite of her meal, and she's got two hours left before her next class: this morning, they were warned that their History teacher was sick. Still she'd rather spend those two hours at school. 

 

She grabs the large denim jacket her mother doesn't wear anymore, grabs her backpack and gets out without a word. 

Her father's still stitting at the kitchen table. 

 

They've moved in five months ago, but she still hasn't gotten used to the house. It's a badly isolated one story house. They'll have a shit winter.

The backyard is –ridiculously small, shouldn't even be called a backyard. The previous tenants left tons of shit there. A bike missing its two wheels, a rusty car door, and three plastic chairs among other things.

 

When she eats at home at noon, she sits in the kitchen with her father, but he rarely ever eats with her. She has no idea when he eats, or if he does. What's sure is that she doesn't see him getting any breakfast in the morning either. 

Usually, he boils some water, pours it in a mug, adds some lemon, some sugar -and some rhum. Keeps him from getting sick. 

He says. 

 

Rey doesn't see him drink the rest of the time, but she knows he does. He either waits for her to be gone, or she hurries to go to her room. 

Meanwhile, he's scarily skinny. Looks like he's over fifty, and he's ten years younger. 

 

He takes two hours naps in the afternoon in addition to his long nights of sleep. Her mother, her, cleans offices and staircases all day. Once she's home, she puts on some make-up, and they both go out. Not too far, not for too long, but they really like going out.  

 

Most of the time, her father doesn't look drunk -doesn't sound drunk when he talks either. Rey forgets he is, for a few hours, until unprompted he'll say out of nowhere, like he did at noon today:

"---you're not a bad kid, you know?"

 

When he does, this time, she looks at him over her plate, resigned, annoyed:

"...Okay."

 

He blinks slowly, then believes necessary to clarify:

"You ---you're okay."

 

She sighs loudly.

 

"Yeah... you're a good kid."

 

He's not a bad person. He doesn't care much, though, except when he's downed a few. She pretends she doesn't care herself so well that she's started to believe it.

But sometimes she just can't fucking stand him.

 

She gets up, puts her plate in the sink:

"I'm going."

 

"W—where??" He asks weakly. 

 

She narrows her eyes at him.

"To  _school_ , Frank."

 

"Oh ---right."

 

Her jaw comes forward a bit, but she's out of the kitchen before he can see it. 

 

Walking to school her walkman in her jacket's pocket and her Tracy Chapman album playing in her headphones help her calm down, even though some of those songs remind her too much of her life. 

 

Usually, she doesn't have a minute to herself on Fridays, her schedule only leaves her enough time to eat. Today, she can take her time walking there. 

 

More importantly, she can make a stop at her locker.

 

On her way there, she tries to remember what exactly she wrote last, without success.

Her anonymous pen pal talked about not finding sleep, but she forgot what precisely she wrote back. She's frowning a bit, her mouth in a pout, focusing. 

 

She's seen a few students in the schoolyard. The hallways, though, are _empty;_  almost disturbingly so, as if the school had closed and she'd been trapped inside by mistake. 

 

Headphones still on, she turns on her right to walk up the whole hallway to the very end of it, her locker being one of the lasts there. 

 

Instead, she comes to a abrupt halt, eyes wide, and reflexively _duck_ , hurrying to cross the entrance of the hallway instead to hide behind the wall -almost dropping her walkman in the process. 

 

The hallway is outrageously long, but she could recognize his silhouette anywhere even that far away, even with a bright backlighting from the window obscuring his form to her. 

 

Solo  _had_  to be exactly where she was headed.

Of course. 

 

 _What the fuck is he even doing there_?

 

Standing, his head low? She didn't have the time to see exactly. 

 

If his locker is anywhere near hers, she had no idea. She's never met him  _once_  in this building.

 

Fingers trembling slightly-how pathetic can she get?- she turns her walkman off. The sole sound of the CD inside coming to a slow stop seem to be indecently loud.

 

She's her back to the wall, her heart beating at an alarming pace. It happens every time he pops up out of nowhere now, as if she was scared he'd catch her thinking about him. She hasn't gotten used to it. 

 

With other students around, she might have been able to act indifferent and walk freely where she wanted to, but without anyone in sight beside him, she's not sure she can handle the awkwardness and pretend to ignore him as convincingly as she usually does. 

 

She slowly bends toward the end of the wall, to very discreetly, for less than a second, check if he left.

_He's still there._

 

She straightens back up, repressing an impatient sigh, almost missing less than a minute later the sound of his steps all the way from the other end of the hallway,  _getting closer_. 

 

Panicking, she quickly looks around, and silently tip toes -as much as she can with her combat boots- to the bathroom. 

 

How fucking ridiculous. 

Is this going to be necessary every time now?

 

She sighs loudly at herself, again -waiting enough time for him to be gone. 

 

Then another five minutes, just to be sure. 

 

And finally, the hallway's perfectly empty again. 

 

She hops every two steps to somewhat satisfy the urge she has to run there, even though it's very unlikely she got a response yet, as she herself left the note only this morning. 

 

But the note  _is_  there, and it's a bit higher than where she left it. 

She always leaves it right above the lock, to clearly see when it's been moved. 

 

Opening her locker's door, she doesn't feel anything more than the usual thrill, the rush of adrenaline, a mix of fear and excitement -fear she's said something that could bring the spider to judge her, or be bored, and stop writing; excitment to discover they share yet another thing in common. 

 

_I don't sleep well_

 

**_me neither_ **

**_not until my parents are home usually_ **

 

_my parents are never home_

_for all kinds of reason_

_but I don't think they like me much_

 

 

She already knows what she'll say next.  ** _I don't think I like your parents much._**

 

She reads the spider's note a second time. a shy smile on her face. 

 

 

But then, her eyes leave the note for a second.

Her train of thought comes to a stop, while the rest goes out of focus.

 

Her smile slowly fades. She clears her throat. 

 

She narrows her eyes. 

 

\---the spider. 

 

For a whole minute, she stares at her locker, completely still. 

Her locker stares back. 

 

She swallows-blinks at it.

 

Her hand, the one holding the note, slowly drops at her side.  

 

 

 

 

Solo.

 

 

Solo is the one who's been writing her. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [look into my eyes / can't you see they're open wide / would I lie to you baby / would I lie to you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIdZQtFoxs)


	8. Terrible news

 

 

Today, Jones wears a tattoo choker around her neck. Her hair is down. Parted in the middle. 

 

She's got a red flannel shirt on, and a dark t-shirt underneath that she tucked in her oversized jeans. They're ripped just under her knees, and she rolled up them once of twice around her ankles. 

 

For reasons unknown, Ben notices all of this way before he realizes she's walking toward them, him, Lopez and Evan. 

 

She's walking toward them. 

 

_She's walking toward them??_

 

What the fuck.  

 

They're leaning against the wire fence closing the schoolyard near the main building, the three of them, and Ben immediately looks down.

Evan and Lopez haven't noticed that Jones is coming, of course they haven't, and he's so tensed and confused and panicked, that he's got the sudden urge to warn them that she is, but how stupid and suspicious would he look? 

He puts his hands in his pockets, in the hope it'll help him conceal his sudden discomfort. He doesn't think Jones would care, or notice, but Lopez might. He clenches his jaw, bracing himself. 

He hasn't paid attention to what Lopez and Evan were talking about, but he takes their sudden silence as a pretty clear indication she's now close enough that they've noticed her approaching. 

 

He lifts his eyes back up just as she arrives.

She looks ...determined? Pissed? Reluctant? 

 

She stops, facing them, her backpack on one shoulder.

Evan and Lopez are frowning, looking at her expectanctly, while she inexplicably looks down now, working her jaw. 

 

Then, she sets her eyes on him. 

 

His heart races in the second. He almost can't hear what she asks him. 

 

"I'm looking for Dameron. Any idea where he is?"

 

She hasn't looked straight at him and they haven't been this close since the canteen incident.

His mouth is really dry, it's a miracle he manages to speak at all. 

 

"No. I don't know."

 

He realizes those are also the first words they've exchanged since then. 

Out loud, that is. That she's aware of. 

 

He gets that she must associate him with Dameron, since she knows they train together often times but he's baffled regardless as to why she'd come to him to find anyone, after having been so set on acting like he doesn't exist. 

He's so unaccustomed to having her eyes on him, he feels... naked. 

 

Before it gets unbearably uncomfortable, Evan interrupts their staring:

 

"I like your t-shirt."

 

It takes a moment for the three of them to understand he's talking to Jones, even though he obviously could only be saying that to her. 

 

It's unexpected from Evan, sure, still Jones' reaction is ---disproportionate. 

She appears _stunned_ , looking at him as if he just materialized out of nowhere, mouth slightly agape -basically just looking  _really confused._

 

And Ben can guess why -at least he thinks. 

 

She's wearing a _Siouxsie and the Banshees_  t-shirt, and people don't exactly imagine Evan listening to that kind of music. 

 

But then, her eyes quickly go from him to Evan, for some reason, making him panic and uncomfortable all over again -before they settle back on Evan.

Ben looks back down. 

 

He's thoroughly unprepared for what she says next:

"...I can lend it to you."

 

By some  _fucking miracle_ , Ben resists the urge to jerk his head back up. 

 

If he thought his heart was pounding before, it was nothing next to the state he's in now. 

 

His whole body goes the most rigid it's ever been. He risks a glance at her. She's looking at Evan still.

 

That can't be a coincidence, can it?

Or is he reading too much into it, just because he's obsessed with the notes he leaves her, and can recite them all?

 

Is she going around lending t-shirts  _to the whole fucking town_? 

 

Evan is the most confused of them four somehow -or the one who shows it the most, maybe. 

He frowns, narrowing his eyes:

 

"... _uuuh_ , what?"

 

Her face settles.

 

"Nothing ---nevermind," she says. When she looks back at Ben it's with a glare, her lips pressed together. 

 

 

He's being paranoid.

 

Nothing's changed, she hates him. 

 

Also, he can't imagine she would have done anything else than immediately find him and confront him, had she found out about the notes. She'd have absolutely no reason to keep his secret safe. More importantly -how could she know? 

 

He's never left any tell about himself, not that she knows anything about him anyway -unless Dameron talked about him, but why would he do that?

And why would she listen?

 

He thinks he's finally gonna be able to breathe when she turns, about to walk away.

 

Except now it's Lopez, who's remained quiet so far, who says after her:

 

"...you're into Dameron, Jones?"

 

Ben turns his head to him, narrowing his eyes.

 

What the fuck is his problem?

 

It's likely he asked her that just to provoke her, yet Ben takes it personally. 

 

Lopez is looking at her with a smirk that's barely there, making his intentions that much more obscure -unless it's an actual question he's curious to know the answer of, if he's seen Jones and Dameron walking around together--

 

But then why would he care anyway? 

Obviously, Ben much prefers to distract himself with why Lopez would ask that, than ask himself just why he feels so goddamn  _irritated_  he did. 

 

Ben catches the blasé look on Jones' face -he senses she won't speak honestly. 

 

Still, he has to bite his tongue to focus on another hurt, when he hears her provoke him back:

 

"Yes.  _Very much so_." 

 

Then, she stands there maybe a touch too long, meaning too long for Ben, and he mumbles low despite himself, jaw set, looking down:

 

"--well he's not here, so."

  

"Also, he's  _gay_ ," Lopez says again. Purely to fight her, Ben supposes.

 

"Not true. He likes girls too," she shoots back without hesitation. 

 

Ben's eyelids flutter and he can only hope his poker face is more or less convincing. 

 

_How does she know that?_

Are Dameron and her  _that_  close? Why would they discuss that?

 

Dameron's bisexuality isn't a secret, but it's not common knowledge in the school either. Lopez himself only knows about it because Ben told him. 

 

Now he _really_ just wants her to go. 

 

They're not meant to interact this way. 

All they do is hurt each together, purposefully or unknowingly, and some things are never meant to change. 

 

She does end up leaving, thank God. 

 

Lopez doesn't seem to like her much, and it's strangely comforting to Ben in that moment. 

 

 

Ben needs some time alone, though. 

 

Jones hasn't left him any notes in three days.

It's never happened since they've started. And now, no matter how absurd it sounds, he can't help but wonder if her new interest for Dameron is what distracts her from their correspondence--

 

\--maybe it isn't that new, and he just hasn't been aware of it. 

 

The first day he doesn't get a response, it doesn't worry him. He knows she's busy on Mondays, and it doesn't stop him from leaving his own notes to her. 

 

Walking by her locker, he can see she still takes them. So he's not alarmed. 

 

The second day, he chews the inside of his cheek most of the day to keep from lying down in front of her locker to wait there. 

 

Quite an abrupt escalation. 

 

She still takes his notes, but she doesn't leave any herself. 

 

On the third day, he decides to asks her a simple question, that should require a simple answer. 

 

_I kept wondering if you were having a good day today_

 

Simply because it's true -he doesn't care how needy it sounds.

 

He carefully omits to tell her that _his_ day was the shittiest day he's ever lived yet. 

 

She doesn't answer. 

 

What she does instead, more and more after that time where she came to talk to him looking for Dameron, is hang out with Poe. 

 

He tries to tell himself that it's just for their assignment. And they're not _glued_ to each other, Ben just sees them a bit more together, that's all. 

He tells himself that as much as possible, but it does little to reassure him. 

 

He wouldn't dare in a million years to ask Dameron what's going on between them. Not so much because it would be suspicious, than because he's terrified of the answer he might get. 

 

All of this would sure be easier to bear if he kept receiving some notes. 

 

A week goes by, though, and he still doesn't see any notes at Jones' locker. 

 

He's the most unhappy fuck on earth. He feels like the lights have been turned off and all he can do now is fumble his way in the dark. 

 

Two times, Jones accompanies Dameron to the run tracks, where Poe's supposed to join Ben, and he has to listen to them talk about the most random things. 

 

A bit like Ben and her did, not a week before, through the notes. 

 

She doesn't say _hello_ to him, doesn't pay any attention to him, and Dameron doesn't seem to take special notice of that. Their conversations go on whether Ben's there or not.  

 

Then when they're done, she leaves and him and Dameron can finally train -even if Ben finds no motivation left in him to do so the two times that happens. 

 

One day, though, she's back with Dameron, and Ben's included in the conversation this time. 

 

Dameron tells him, shaking his head with a incredulous smile: 

 

"Jones receives anonymous letters at her house."

 

Ben freezes.

 

Dameron's a pretty oblivious person by nature, but Jones might notice how tense he's gone -when he looks at her, though, she's bent a bit, looking at something inside her walkman. 

 

He's not an idiot.

 

He knows it's about the notes.

At least, she cares that it remains a secret, enough that she'd change some crucial facts about it when mentionning it to Dameron, and it's a relief -a good sign. 

 

"Isn't it  _insane_?" Dameron asks him. 

 

Ben swallows, rubbing the side of his neck -he's exempted from answering when Jones lifts her head back up and asks in turn: 

"Why do you think they hide their identity?"

 

Ben squirms. He doesn't know what to do with himself, and looks down, kicking some invisible dirt. Dameron is putting on his running shoes, and chuckles: 

 

"I mean, it depends --are those death threats?"

 

 

She ignores his joke, and mumbles all of a sudden.

"No. They're..."

 

Ben is looking down, but he's barely breathing, listening closely. 

 

She clears her throat. 

 

"They're --nice... thoughtful... or whatever."

 

She wrinkles her nose then -as if she hated to be admitting that. 

 

Ben's heart is suddenly so incredibly loud. 

 

"So why would they need to be anonymous?" She asks Dameron again. 

 

Is that what bothers her?  _The anonymity?_

 

Is that why she stopped writing? 

It'd be such a better explanation than any of those he's imagined, but it's still terrible, _terrible news_ \--because how is he supposed to fix that? 

 

He clenches his jaw. He can only keep silent anyway. 

 

Dameron, him, still tries to answer:

"Um, they're in love?" He starts, wriggling his eyebrows at her. 

 

Ben clearly sees her lips press in a tight line.

 

But then, Dameron becomes serious, getting back up, facing her: 

 

"Actually, it could be it. They could be afraid of their feelings." He pauses a second. "If their parents disapprove of it -if it's a girl, for instance, you see? or--"

 

He thinks some more, squinting his eyes.

 

Meanwhile, Jones is very still.

Her fists are clenched. 

 

"If it goes against their religion? --or if they're married," he shrugs, and then, just then, it's beyond Ben's control--

 

He snorts.

Way too loud. 

 

Both of them turn to him. 

 

 _Shit_. 

 

To mask his discomfort, he crouches to the ground to tie his shoe again.  

 

Real subtle. 

 

Dameron frowns at him. 

"Solo, what do you think? ... why not sign the letters?" 

 

His chest fills with air, and he sighs, somewhat silently. It doesn't relieve him of the intense frustration he feels at the moment, though. 

 

"I don't know," he starts, eyes on his shoelaces, before muttering:

"... _and i don't fucking care_."

 

There's no real agressivity behind it, but it's still what it is. He can't take any word back. 

 

And it infuriates her all the same. It's not showing so much, yet somehow he can tell. 

 

He doesn't think he'll ever get to know her a different way than furious at him. 

 

Her mouth in a frown, she concludes through clenched teeth, eyes down:

 

"Well,  _I_   _think_  it's because they're  _ugly_."

 

...Ben tries really hard not to wince at that, and focus on breathing at a normal pace. 

 

"I really don't see any other reason," she adds.  

 

Dameron half-snorts, frowning.

"--ooo- _kay?_ " 

 

 

Later on, Jones left and Ben slows down barely two minutes after him and Dameron have started their run. 

 

Dameron runs on the spot, huffing, looking at him, confused:

"What's up, what's going on?"

 

Ben comes to a stop, chest heaving. 

He doesn't look at Dameron.

 

"I'm --forget it, I can't run. See you next time."

 

"What's the problem?"

 

Ben doesn't turn to him -he's already walking toward his backpack he left a few feet away.

 

"Nothing, I don't feel good. I'm--sick or something."

 

He doesn't bother saying more, and leaves Dameron there. 

 

The school is almost empty at this hour. The only students left are usually the ones training. 

 

Ben goes straight to Jones locker. 

There, he rips a piece of paper from the notebook he uses for math, and writes.

 

 

_I liked talking to you_

 

_it was nice_

 

 

He works his jaw, his throat tight, then adds in haste before he can change his mind: 

 

_I'll leave you alone now_

 

He gets up, slips the note in.

 

And leaves.  

 

 

That night, he doesn't sleep. 

 

He feels fucking ridiculous. 

 

When he's back at school, the next day, he can't go straight away to her locker, but he hopes really hard that the note will still be there when he does, and that he can still take it back. 

 

To just let it end on its own. 

 

 

Around eleven, between two of his classes, the hallway isn't empty, but he doesn't care. He goes to her locker. 

 

He's relieved then. 

The note's still there. 

 

He routs it out with his ruler, quite efficiently. 

 

 

In the bathroom, feet on the pedal of the bin, he unfolds it, about to throw it away.

 

But he stops there.

 

Two words have been written under his message with a black pen.  

 

 

_**please** _

 

_**don't** _

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Love letters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou--2c1Ta2U)


	9. Uncomplicated hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ! DEAR VENGEFUL BUTTERFLYS PLEASE READ THIS !
> 
> There's been a mix-up in the emails AO3 sent to some of you regarding the updates -as a result, I've noticed that some readers have read chapter 8 BEFORE chapter 7, or that they haven't read chapter 7 at all. 
> 
> This will actually greatly impact your understanding of the story -something important happens in chapter 7, and if you read the rest of the story with that chapter missing, Rey's actions won't make a lot of sense. 
> 
> Please make sure that you've read all chapters, and in the right order, before continuing. 
> 
> Also, I guess that I should tell you now to... be on the lookout for future similar fuck up? lol
> 
> Try and make sure you're reading the right chapter^^ 
> 
> THANKS OBAMA

 

 

Ben Solo is the one who's been writing her.

 

 

There's no reason for her to be so sure of it, yet she is.

 

Standing in the hallway, the note in her hand, she stares at it with barely contained furor -and many other things she's not ready to confront herself with. Deception, confusion, shame.

 

Wonder.

 

Her vision blurs.

 

 

She feels cheated, the most exposed she's ever felt. The things she revealed to a stranger, she's been revealing them to him all along.

Her entire body goes rigid with blind rage.

 

She throws the note in anger, and the weak flight it does to the ground is nowhere near satisfying -if anything, it worsens her state.

 

Her face burns, and it's so hard to breathe.

 

Harder still is to walk away from that note on the ground.

 

With the most shame she's ever felt, she steps toward it, and bends down, picking it up.

 

When her brain, under shock, assaults her with memories of previous notes, it mixes her current fury with words of comfort, sympathy, -tenderness, even, that Solo's provided multiples times if not systematically, and it leaves her breathless, disoriented.

 

She can't trust anything she perceives to be true.

 

 

The amount of time she's spent thinking of him the past weeks, watching him from afar or closer, is now fused to the amount of time she's spent wondering about the next notes she'd get, and the ones already received -all of it essentially plainly showing _how full of Ben Solo her days have been_ all this time, since she's arrived in this school.

 

Time spent hating him, avoiding him, watching him, and now--

\--time spent thinking about his words.

 

The thought that he's played her immediately comes to the forefront of her mind -in fact, it takes all the room there in a second.

 

Not even the seemingly genuine content of the notes keep her from not surrendering to that next logical explanation, that he actually wasn't genuine, and that he's written her to have her confess painful, personal things to him.

 

Yet a very simple and quiet fact nudges her mind softly.

...why would he return each and every note? If his intentions were to humiliate her?

 

...why would he tell her everything he's told her about himself?

 

They aren't grotesque, exagerrated stories, the anecdotes he's given her about his childhood, his parents, his life after high school among other things.

 

The things he tells her are ugly, naked, seemingly unimportant thoughts.

 

 

If she was completely ready to consider his intentions aren't bad --then just what are his intentions?

Why is he doing that?

 

A day pass without her writing anything back. With her trying as hard as she can to avoid being anywhere near him. She can't think when he's near. She can't think when he's in her sight. She's too hyper aware of his presence -in class, on the schoolyard, in the hallways -now more than ever.

 

She can't write back, can't confront him, can't make the smallest decision -and she can't even pinpoint why she feels so paralyzed.

 

He leaves another note before she does anything anyway -and at first, she frowns, irritated as she reads it, because it seems to come out-of-nowhere, what he's saying -until she remembers it actually has to do with some old notes they left each other. He's picking up an old conversation. Probably because she met him with silence for the first time since they've been doing this.

 

 

_we had an old pine in our garden_

_that we cut down a few years ago_

_I'd say secrets to it when I was little_

_too much time alone I guess_

_I wish I could still talk to dogs the way I used to back then_

_and not look crazy_

 

 

She clenches her jaw, and without thinking twice, writes down with her black pen:

 

**_I think it'd be stupid_ **

 

She's trying to be hurtful, as best as she can, feeling no relief as she does, but she hopes his response will bring her some -when he'll meet her cruelty with his own, and his whole being will start to make sense again to her, and she will be able to hate him plainly, the way she did before, with a pure, unaltered, uncomplicated hate.

Instead, _this_ , is the response she gets the next day, after hours spent ignoring the knot in her stomach until she gets to read it:

 

_not a dog person then?_

 

 

She clears a suddenly very tight throat.

His tact in the face of her harshness brings her back down to earth right away.

 

She can't do that again.

 

 

Silence it is, then -if neither cruelty nor gentleness are options.

 

She actually wonders how he's managed to write her for so long without her never catching him, especially with how often she'd check her locker lately, impatient to get another note.

 

...to her great shame, that, in particular, hasn't changed.

 

She's stopped writing him, but he, for some reason, hasn't.

And she's at her locker anytime she can.

 

It remains this way for three days, three long days spent pressing her lips in frustration at his notes before another wave of anger takes her.

 

If he doesn't want to _really_ talk ot her, she'll try it out, see what happens when they're close again, see if they can stand a few feets from one another and not turn it into a show for everybody to see.

 

Under the pretext of looking for Dameron, she walks up to him - _actually walks up to him_.

 

She hopes she's not too obviously infuriated, and also, that her heart is pounding from anger only. He's with the two boys she always sees him with.

 

The walk there, crossing the whole schoolyard, isn't that long, but her breath is short by the time she gets there.

 

And then, _she's there_.

 

The closest she's ever been to him.

She has to look up, when she does look at him.

 

He doesn't look back at first, and she'd like so much to snort at that.

 

None of his behavior, of the way he stands, the way he speaks, betray his secret to anyone who isn't looking for clues. She wouldn't have guessed his discomfort if she hadn't known already.

 

Now, all she can see is the way he bites the inside of his cheek, looking down, how he defensively puts his hands in his pockets, how he shifts from one foot to the other then tries really hard not to do it again.

 

He tells her he doesn't know where Dameron is. With an even voice.

 

Then, she has a surge of cold sweat _when the blond one of his two friends tells her he likes her t-shirt_.

 

All logic and coherence collapse, and she panics because what if, in fact, _he_ 's the one who's been writing her notes, and Solo only delivered them?

And before she can think, she offers to lend it to him, to see what reactions she gets.

 

She doesn't regret doing that.

 

Solo keeps his eyes down, but he straightens ever so slightly, his shoulders barely tensing -still, visibly enough that she catches it. If she wasn't expecting it, she would have missed it.

 

And it's not exactly that he tenses up that gives him away, but rather that he's not having the reaction to this that he would have had, if he hadn't had that same conversation with her through the notes, about another t-shirt she wore, and wasn't so desperately trying to hide it.

 

His reaction isn't the reaction of someone who's unaware of that.

 

...as if to prove her point, the blond boy, him, is having a much more natural reaction to her proposition:

 

"--- _what??"_

 

"Forget it."

 

 

She knows all she needs to know.

 

 

Dameron is of good company, he's got good conversation, makes her feel like she's not boring, and that'd be enough to hang out with him most of her time.

 

Even as she hates it, though, with all her might, she won't try to deny that those aren't the reasons why she starts walking around with him.

 

Her chances are small, but sometimes, he's on his way to find Solo, and she gets to follow him there acting like she doesn't care, without it being suspicious.

 

She doesn't want to get into why she wants to be around Solo too much. Surely she needs glimpses of what he's like, in the flesh, how he's like when he's his natural self, when he's doing or saying something meaningless, without thinking.

She knows, though, that she won't get any of this being around him. 

 

He's anything but relaxed, or his natural self whenever she's near. And he never risks talking.

 

He stares at his shoes, waits for her and Dameron to be finished.

Eventually, she leaves.

 

 

Meanwhile, she keeps receiving his notes, and she remains silent in return.

 

There's no real design behind it, her resentment is simply too strong to write anything with enough genuineness while pretending like she doesn't know who writes her.

 

 

His notes get shorter and shorter over the course of just a week.

 

 

All the while feeling her stomach clench and her breathing go uneven, she lets it happen. Simply avoiding all together to ask herself if she could handle it if he were to stop himself.

 

She discovers if she can soon enough anyway, when comes a day where he leaves what's meant to be his last note.

 

A blaring alarm goes off in her. If she wanted to salvage what little denial she had left about what all of this meant to her, it goes through the window the second she reads that note.

She doesn't make him wait this time.

 

_I'll leave you alone_

**_please_ **

****

**_don't_ **

 

 

\--spending the rest of the next four hours biting her nails -and the rest of her hands too- waiting for an answer. When she gets a note back, her heart is thundering against her rib cage.

 

_I won't_

 

 

This time, she can't bring herself to be mad about how Solo counters her expectations. How he's not showing any pride, or any spite, two things she used to believe he was full of.

 

In that moment, she has the gall to believe that maybe time will soothe whatever's hurting her.

 

Another week goes by, and she fails at taming her own spite.

She forces the replies to his notes out -they're short, to the point, vague -her heart unresolved.

 

Her confusion as to why he does all this leaves her more frustrated by the day -and one Monday, after a soccer practice, she's walking, covered in sweat and lost in thoughts among her teammates as all twenty of them are getting around the run tracks, backpack on their shoulders, to get to the locker room on the other side of it.

 

She's a bit behind everyone, looking down, but in the corner of her eye she spots it, in the grass next to the run tracks.

 

A red and blue tracksuit jacket, with white stripes on the sleeves.

 

Solo's jacket.

 

It's somewhat folded near his backpack, and what she supposes is Dameron's backpack.

 

She didn't even know she'd took a mental image of that jacket. He doesn't wear it often, usually to train.

 

 

Her eyes immediately search for them, and sure enough, there they are, so far they're barely recognizable from where she stands.

 

Running.

 

 

She doesn't think about what she's doing. She just does it.

 

 

She crouches under the white handrail in one swift movement, her hand snatching the jacket and bringing it to her chest -before hurrying back to join the rest of her teammates, heart pounding.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I used to write/ I used to write letters, I used to sign my name/ I used to sleep at night/ before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ7osdJ4H_8)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter will be posted today <3


	10. Goodbye dignity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't mind me as I reply to comments you posted days ago  
> so sorry for that  
> please enjoy another update <3

 

She opens her backpack with slightly shaky hands to shove the jacket inside.

None of the other girls pay attention to what she's doing. Most of them are chatting with what little energy they have left. 

 

When she looks back to see where Dameron and Solo are, they're still incredibly far, but her heart doesn't calm down. 

So she parts from the others, way too suddenly not to raise eyebrows -rushing to the schoolyard to cross it. She won't bother changing.

 

A minute later, she's on her way home, still wearing her soccer jersey. 

She's alone on the sidewalk the whole way there, yet taking the jacket out of her backpack before she's in her room is out of the question.

 

When she gets home, she runs to the stairs, the jacket's burning her back through her bag -yet she comes to a sudden stop.

That's something she's never done in years, going straight to her room when she comes home in the afternoon.

She almost forgot to indulge one of her oldest habit.

Quietly, she pads to the living-room, where her father is lying face down on the couch, his form immobile, in the middle of his two hour nap. 

She thinks she can see his ribs move; still, maybe out of pure superstition, she puts two fingers on the side of his neck, like she always does, and focus. He doesn't move an inch.

When she feels a pulse, she leaves the room to finally climb up the stairs. 

 

Again, once inside, she locks the door, something she never does -and she really doesn't know why she would, yet...

She throws her backpack on her small single bed, and pretends as if she's forgotten there's even a jacket in there for a minute, walking around, hands on her hips, only then realizing she's breathing a bit too hard. 

 

She eyes the backpack, in a way that'd lead anyone to believe the bag is the one to blame for the situation, then slowly comes to stand at the end of her bed. 

 

She slowly reaches for it finally, and opens it.

 

Her movements are inexplicably cautious as she takes it out -as is she was manipulating something fragile, taking each of its aspects in. Carefully unfolding it. 

 

She feels the soft fabric in her palm, between her fingers, looking down at it, her mouth in a pout the way it always is when something's got her full attention. 

 

She gulps silently.

 

Then, still with very slow movements, she lays it down on her bed.

 

She arranges it, gingerly straightens its sleeves, the way she would with her own clothes if she were to attend a wedding, or something else as equally important. 

 

She studies it, standing there, in the silence of her room, of the whole house, trying to make sense of what she's doing -and finding no answers. 

 

After some time, she sits next to it. 

 

Her hesitant hand reaches for it. To feel the fabric again.

 

But that's not what she wants to do. 

 

Trying hard not to go over all the reasons why this is wrong, she then very tentatively brings the fabric two inches away from her face. 

 

And sniffs it.

One time.

 

Barely. 

 

She feels observed -like anyone will be able to tell what she's done once she gets out of that room- and it makes her heart's pace that much faster. 

 

She swallows. Buying herself some time. 

 

But eventually, she brings the jacket closer, grazing her nose against the collar -and sniffs it a second time, a bit more like she means it, her chin slightly in, as if she was in public and wanted to do it discreetly. 

 

Whatever smell she gets she finds that she wants to have a better sense of it, and presses the fabric against her nose, her mouth.

 

Before breathing it in, eyes closed --taking in her lungs all the air she can get. 

 

She mainly catches the scent of a cheap deodorant. 

 

She hates it. 

 

On that thought, she carefully rolls it into a ball and buries her whole face in it, then stays that way, feeling herself rock imperceptibly to her breathing, until the fabric on her nose and mouth is too warm.  

 

When she looks up, light headed, she catches her reflection in the long mirror on the door of her wardrobe. 

 

It's a challenging sight, to say the least. 

 

It doesn't stop her. 

 

Still with painfully cautious movements, she disentangles it, and stands up. 

 

She puts the jacket on.

 

She drowns in it. 

 

_I don't think it's my size._

 

She snorts softly --hearing herself mutter:

 

"--y'a think?"

 

Once she's rolled the sleeves up her forearms a bit, she strokes it some more, eyes staring.

 

  
Then recites with a flat voice: 

" _I'm such a clutz._ "

 

She pauses, without any real intention to go on.

 

A few seconds later, though, she adds:

 

" _Guess who's gonna have to clean this mess?_ "

 

For some reason, she only  _now_  feels ridiculous. 

 

But then, her eyes lose their focus.

 

She stands there, and imagines Solo looking down at her. 

 

His eyes are the most familiar to her with a crease between his eyebrows, even when he's not doing anything, just thinking, or maybe not even that. 

She can't explain, then, why she can imagine _so easily_ what his eyes must look like with a softer form.

 

 _"Don't mind Davis,"_   she whispers.

 

_"...thank you for saving me."_

 

...staring down at the hem she's been distractedly fiddling with. 

 

Watching a salty drop fall on her hand. 

 

 

The jacket stays on the chair she pushed in the corner of her room near the window.

 

When she understands after three hours of insomnia that she won't sleep, that night, she yet again keeps from examining what she's doing, why she's doing it, or what it means, and gets up.

 

She pads to Solo's jacket, barefoot, and returns to bed with it.

 

Under the blanket, she wriggles a bit, tucking it under her chin, against her chest, her belly. Decidedly ignoring how right it feels. 

 

...soon finding herself rewarded with a soundless sleep. 

 

  
She knows him, yet she doesn't. 

She understands him, yet she doesn't. 

 

She hates him. 

 

 

She's had his jacket for three days already, when without warning -without seeing it coming herself- and with little regard for what they were talking about in the first place, she writes those words to him: 

 

**_is my voice annoying?_ **

****

**_if you hide who you are_ **

**_isn't it to keep me away from you?_ **

 

Goodbye dignity. 

 

It's the first time she mentions his anonymity -through the notes, that is. She thinks he's gonna ignore it, like he does some questions that might be too personal. 

 

She finds another note a few hours later. 

 

 

_I wouldn't spend a minute away from you if I could_

_I hate that you believe I would and I hate your fucking parents_

_anyone who's given the chance to be anywhere near you and waste it away_

 

_please don't ever say that again_

 

She hides behind the door of her locker. And remains that way for five minutes, the note in her hand. 

 

 

 

She's on the soccer pitch, the next day, when Dameron finds her. The sky is a bit less bright. The days are shorter and shorter. 

 

 _Fuck soccer_ , she thinks, and she walks up to him, huffing, her cheeks red.

 

Dameron is into a boy  he's exchanged two words total with. 

 

She wants to hear him talk about it. It usually distracts her like nothing else of what's going on with her. 

 

The similarities between their situations have nothing to do with how much she wants to hear talk about it, of course. 

Dameron says he can't reveal who the boy is, and for a moment, she wishes him and Solo weren't friends. 

 

She almost chokes on the first real laugh she's had in weeks when she realizes Solo's walking toward them, with quite decided steps. 

 

As usual, she'll focus on Poe and act unaffected, the same way Solo will act if their previous times the three of them together are of any indication.

 

And Poe's smile is contagious enough that she doesn't have to fake hers -though anyone attentive would perceive the bitterness behind it. 

 

She's surprised Solo doesn't get closer to them than that, when he stops a few feet away, letting his backpack fall to he ground: he doesn't usually gravitates that far, and he seems more fidgety than usual.

 

But she figures he's healthy nonetheless because he rudely interrupts Dameron, a tone of voice letting her believe he's actually making an effort to contain his irritation:

 

"...Dameron, are we going or what?"

 

Naturally, she doesn't get a  _Hello_  today anymore than she has before.

 

He's not snappy exactly, there's impatience there but his agressivity isn't showing too much if at all -yet. 

 

And Dameron is polite -more than that, _he likes Solo_. She knows, because he's mentioned him once or twice to her, always with true affection.

Solo's not just a friend to him -he's something of a best friend. 

 

So it's no surprise that Dameron manages to diffuse the tension at first with very few words, assuring him that he's about to be done with her -implying that Solo doesn't have to wait for him here. 

 

But Solo doesn't leave. His hands are on his hips.

 

He looks down at the grass, jaw clenched. 

 

Dameron is back to his story, seemingly oblivious that something's wrong. 

 

She huffs another short laugh at something Dameron says, even if her heart is much less in it now.

 

The rest happens way too fast. 

 

" _Poe_. We were supposed to  _train_ ," Solo spits.

 

 _Then_ , his eyes still on Dameron, he gestures at her.

 

"You're fucking  _friends with her,_  now, _is that it?_ "

 

Dameron opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

 

It only lasts a second, but it's already too much hesitation. 

 

Solo's tone remains sharp as he narrows his eyes at Dameron, wincing:

 

"What do you even have in common with _her?_ "

 

Dameron only stutters, half shrugging -it's okay, though, because Solo's attention has shifted on her. 

 

He seems to just then take into account that she can hear him -that she's standing  _right there._

 

And his intentions might not be bad. He might not mean it.

The impact on her is the same though.

 

He appears to take in her bare teeth, and her trembling lip. Her shiny eyes, the start of a snarl. She doesn't lower her gaze -and he shrugs defensively in return, jaw forward:

 

" _\--what?!_ "

 

 

The jacket she stole comes to her mind.

 

How tight she's held it to her chest just the night before, and the nights before that. 

 

She feels stupid.

 

So fucking stupid. 

 

Something like regret flashes in his eyes now that the silence has stretched for a few seconds too long. But it's not enough.

 

And it's too late. 

 

"Why are you afraid of being my friend, Solo?" She asks, and she's surprised to find out her voice isn't trembling -and that her tone is unintentionally soft, low.

 

 

Any louder than that and her voice would be filled with tremors. Any softer than that, and he wouldn't be able to hear her at all. 

 

Chewing the inside of his cheek Solo's only able to defy her with a half hearted snort, barely audible. 

 

Dameron stays quiet -and confused. 

 

What she says next catches them both off guard. 

 

"...I would _never_ let it happen."

 

Solo stills then. 

His eyes are on her. There's no trace of defiance left.

 

He's trying his best to stand before her without showing anything, all the while processing what's happening, lips pressing, throat working. 

 

Words in her mouth are like parasites she must force out. She has his full attention. 

 

Her tone is resigned, defeated, and her face is aflame. She pushes the words out gently, one by one.

 

"You don't have to worry about it... I hate you. _"_

 

Her voice cracks at the end of her sentence, just as she sees Solo flinch, in an almost imperceptible way. 

To his credit, he doesn't lower his eyes. Still it looks like it's the hardest thing to do. 

 

A faint "Uh... guys?" comes from her right. 

 

It doesn't break her stare and she swallows, feeling something rolling down her cheek. 

 

She almost breathes the rest. 

And he hears her -he hears her good in fact, if the hurt she can plainly see settling on his face means anything. 

 

 

"...in fact no one likes you.

 

Not even your father."

 

 

...she doesn't need to be told she's gone too far. 

 

But just in case she was wondering, Dameron lets his shock known. 

 

 

_"----Rey, what the fuck??? "_

 

 

Her attention, though, is on Solo only.

 

He just takes it. Jaw set. Eyelids fluttering. 

 

But then, he does look down. 

 

Right from where she stands, she hears a faint, shuddering breath from him. Lips parted, fists clenched. 

He passes a hand on his forehead.

 

The pang in her chest can only let her imagine what he must feel. 

 

Maybe as hurt as she feels, if not more. 

 

 

Dameron's gaping, genuinely baffled. 

 

 

Her eyes don't leave Solo as he slowly bends to pick his backpack up. 

 

 

"Did I miss something?" she hears Dameron ask. 

 

 

They both look at Solo walk away for a minute. 

 

She only then feels how wet her cheeks are, and tries to swallow down the next tears. 

 

She wordlessly turns around. 

 

And leaves Dameron there -hearing him say again behind her in sheer disbelief:

 

 

_"What the fuck just happened??"_

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Look at me standing here on my own again, up straight in the sunshine / I need a friend, oh, I need a friend ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZoHfJZACA)


	11. Pink sky

 

Rey breathes in. Out. 

 

Dameron and her have a paper to work on, but it's not like they need to be on it for hours. Really they don't need to meet all that much. 

And since the  _incident_  a week ago, Dameron has been quite a nice boy, polite and all, but he's not so keen on hanging with Rey if they don't have to be working, not as much as he was before. 

 

She'd be hurt, if she wasn't so preoccupied by another kind of hurt. 

 

Solo stopped writing her. 

 

It's everything she's imagined it'd be. 

When she doesn't find any note at her locker, the day after what happened on the soccer pitch happened, -only the note she left without any response- fear blossoms  _instantly_  in her chest but she swallows it down.

After what he's said, she thinks that she's not even sure she wants him to write her, and she's not sure she wants to talk to him anyhow.

In short, she lies to herself. 

And soon she's forced to acknowledge that, because of the way she still tries not to  _rush too obviously_  to her locker.

Hoping that there's something waiting for her there. 

 

And how more  _crushed_  she is to find nothing, without fail, each and every time. 

 

She saw it coming, though, of course she did.

 

What she most certainly didn't expect, however, was that he'd stop taking her notes as well. 

 

She's a true, hopeless fool, because once again she makes a point of acting like it doesn't affect her either.

 

She's desperate to prove to herself that it doesn't matter as much as the pang in her chest would lead her to admit it does.

\--all the while desperately trying to find signs that it  _does_   _matter to him._

 

Solo. 

 

She risks glances his way, and he's determinedly focused on not doing the same, also making sure he doesn't stay in the same room or area as her if he can help it. 

 

The fact that she can plainly see that it's not done out of pride, has gotta be what hurts the most.

 

She knows it doesn't come from pride, because the two times he inadvertently meets her eyes, he averts them with a pained, stealthy wince, the reflexive kind.  

 

Like he  _can't_  look at her, and can't have her look at him either. 

 

Not because it angers him -not because he's above her -- 

 

Because it's too  _painful,_  to be in the same room. 

 

Most of the time, he looks like he's holding his breath until he gets to be away from her. 

 

 

And Rey shrugs to herself almost compulsively about it. 

 

\---she's a true, hopeless fool. 

 

 

She leaves a note. Then a second one. Then a third. 

 

 

She takes them all back, throws them away. 

She shrugs, jaw set.  _She doesn't care._

 

 

At home, she pulls the jacket from under her pillow and tosses it without looking on the floor.  _Because she doesn't care._

It stays there. 

 

On the third night, the creeping realization that the situation might be a bit harder to face than she thought, ruins her previous efforts completely.  

Very silently, as if she could fool herself about it if she doesn't make any noise, she cries in her pillow. 

 

Then, shameful, she gets out of bed, picks the jacket up--

 

Then goes back to bed with it. 

 

 

She shouldn't be that affected. He'll write her  _eventually_. 

He'll take her notes  _eventually_.

 

Over the course of the week, she then imagines -deliriously - that she'll care less eventually. 

 

It's only a week, but when pain steadily intensifies it certainly impacts one's perception of time.

Feels like fucking months. 

 

She takes the detour to the running track more and more, careful to quickly squint her eyes and sweep the whole place, but she never finds him there anymore.

 

It was one of her most reliable options before. 

A few times, she actually sees Dameron running alone in a lane. 

 

 

One afternoon, Poe and her are working on their assignement, and by then her need to find a way to fix whatever can be fixed is urgent. 

It helps her being bold, knowing that there won't be that many occasions to do something about the situation.

 

And though she's seen him train alone recently, she can't help but hope she'll see Solo if she follows Dameron.

 

She wants to  _see him_.

She wants things to be like they used to be, when she thought the situation could hardly be worse. 

It could. It is, now. 

 

They're both bent over their notebooks, sitting at one of the outdoor tables near the science building that day.

It's easier to study now that they spend less time chatting, she thinks bitterly.

 

Sooner than she had anticipated, he looks at his oversized G-shock wrist watch, and offers a polite smile.

 

"Gotta go," he comments, getting up to pack his things.

 

Normally, he'd say  _Gotta train_ , or  _Gotta run_ , and Rey knows what that small change means.

He's trying not to bring attention to anything related to his training -meaning to Solo, and what happened with him.

 

To what they've both been thinking about for a week without ever discussing it. 

 

She sallows silently then, and with very little assurance she says:  

"I--I'll walk with you there."

 

Gone are all her hopes of sounding casual.  

 

"Uh, no, it's okay, Rey," Dameron says without looking at her, and more importantly, without any hesitation: like he expected her to suggest that.

 

Somehow, it makes her bolder.

 

"It's fine," she assures him, shrugging, "I don't have anything better to do."

 

Dameron has been careful not to mention what happened all week. He's not tip toeing now, though. 

"Rey –I'd rather not, if you don't mind."

 

And that's all she needs, in turn, to speak. Even if long seconds pass before she does, as she looks down at her notebook, twiddling with the corner of a page. 

 

"Is it because of Solo?" She finally asks, repressing a wince at how small her voice sounds. 

 

" _Yes_ , it is."

 

He's still not looking at her, just focusing on what he's doing, putting his jacket on. 

 

Under any other circumstances, it'd be more than enough to shut her up.

She's desperate for honesty, but she's never handled bluntness well.

Watching Dameron preparing to leave, though, is prompting - the whole conversation sounds like a door closing on her. She'll be damned if she doesn't try to get all she can get. 

 

Nevertheless, her tone of voice is downright pitiful:

"Has  _he_... asked you... to --- ?"

 

She means to ask  _Has he asked you to make sure I don't approach him_ ,  _has he asked you to stop coming around him with me_  -she means to ask many things, and she doesn't, because Dameron cuts her off with a sigh. 

 

"He hasn't asked me  _anything_ , Jones. He doesn't  _talk_ , he's not like that. I'm the one asking  _you_."

 

He shifts from one foot to the other, his backpack on his shoulder, when she doesn't speak again. She's still nervously folding the corner of her notebook's page, when he settles for an embarrassed: "See you, Jones."

It occurs to her than he's never called her  _Jones_  before. 

 

Her messages just sit there, in the slit of her locker.

Everytime she opens it, they fall, and she patiently picks them all up, and puts them back in.

 

She changes them a few times, not that it's of any importance what's written if nobody reads them. If  _he_  doesn't read them.  

 

 

She winces, her throat tight, when she thinks about what she'd truly like to write.

 

Things like _I hope nobody hurt you_.

 

 _I hope you're okay_. 

 

Simple, helpless words. 

 

She can't bring herself to write them down. She barely can deal with thinking them. 

 

 

When more than a week and a half has gone by, she tries her best to get used to the idea that it's over, even if everytime she entertains it something revolts in her, something she hates herself for, something she'd be better off without.

 

One day she'll throw away the notes he gave her, all the little ways he's cared for her, and it'll be like it never happened, it'll feel like it was all a strange dream. 

No witness, no proof -nothing left. 

 

The sooner she starts understanding that  _this is it_ , the sooner she'll live with it.

So she repeats it to herself, over and over. 

 

All the while leaving the notes she wrote for him exactly where they are.

 

 

And because she can't learn, apparently, one morning she writes a different kind of note while in class.

 

The kind that makes her dramatic self feel like she's carelessly toying with Life.

Like she's poking at the wound of a weak animal. 

 

The kind that turns something seemingly meaningless and hidden into something with a name. 

 

 

**_Ben Solo hates me_ **

**_he's hated me on sight and I don't know why_ **

**_do you know him?_ **

 

 

She starts on a too small piece of paper, ending up writing more than she intended. When she's done, she has to number the notes.  

She dreads him reading those notes so much. Not having even the smallest clue of how he would react to them, makes her feel like she's naked in the middle of the schoolyard.

 

Yet she slips them near the lock of her locker.

Where he can find them. 

 

Solos avoids her, but he hasn't disappeared. He hasn't changed school.

 

She catches a glimpse of him from time to time. Always looking away.

At reception.  Getting out of the canteen, or in the bathroom.

That's it.

 

She never sees him anywhere near the running track anymore -not at the hours she used to.  

 

 

It's five thirty, one afternoon, when Rey walks in direction of the soccer pitch.

The sky is a bit pink toward the west. She's just going to check her grade, because she's been told they're up by the locker rooms. 

 

At this hour, on a Tuesday, there's rarely anyone. Not on the soccer field. 

 

Herself is at school still, only because Rose wanted them to work on their assignement in English. 

 

She doesn't even plan on checking her grade initially. She doesn't care enough to bother walking all the way to the soccer field, and she could wait until her next soccer practice.

 

Still.  

She needs to walk. She needs to be alone.

She needs to not go home, at least not immediately. 

 

 

When she gets there, she finds that she's not alone. 

 

Solo's lying down in the grass. 

 

This probably explains why she doesn't notice him right away. 

 

Not that he's hard to notice. He's tall and long and takes a lot of room, not exactly the type one misses when walking by him, even if he's lying down. 

 

But whether it's because she's never imagined him to be the kind to lie down in public in the first place, or because she simply doesn't dare to hope seeing him anywhere other than briefly in the hallways or in the one class they share, she barely registers that there's someone on the field. 

 

She's walking her eyes down in front of her, and it takes her recognizing his black backpack and its purple and green stripes on the sides along with his grey sweatshirt, near the white handrail she's following in direction of the locker rooms, to blink and come to a halt. 

 

She looks up then, and back toward the body lying down maybe just fourty feet away in the field.

 

Her heart beats furiously the second she sees that it's him.

 

The silence across the field is deafening, all of a sudden. She doesn't know how she hasn't noticed before, how silent it is. 

 

Hair wet around his face, cheeks red, looking straight at the sky, his arms and his legs spread--he just ran.

And he's now breathing somewhat peacefully. 

 

That's indication enough that he hasn't seen her. 

 

For maybe a minute, she gets to watch him from fairly close, all things considered, without him knowing.

 

She has no idea what she's doing, only that she's not ready to leave just yet.

 

She wouldn't know what to say, and she certainly doesn't know what to do other than that -other than delaying the moment she'll have to keep on walking, and keep on pretending like they're strangers to each other.  

 

After a minute, though, her stare apparently burns him. In the corner of his eye he notices that someone stopped near the handrail. 

She sees him glance her way lazily. 

 

Before his eyes widen, and he sits up. 

Looking straight at her. 

 

No irritation, no anger, simply pure confusion and maybe shock, in a way. 

 

Exactly what he must be seeing on her own face.

 

He swallows hard, just sitting there, immobile, his eyes not leaving her. 

 

Meanwhile, she does her best to breathe steadily. 

Her eyes fall on his backpack and sweatshirt, then go back on him. 

 

He follows her gaze, and frowns, lips parting. If he wants to say anything to her he seems to have as much difficulty as she does saying a single word. 

 

But he does speak a few seconds later. 

 

...when she gingerly steps toward his sweatshirt -and reaches for it, hoping he doesn't notice how shaky her hand is.

 

He watches her do, frowning and blinking, still sitting down -more and more confused as to what is happening.

 

She wouldn't be able to help him much finding out why she does that - apart from the fact that she just  _can't bear_  to simply walk away from him.

 

If she can't talk to him, and she can't be around him, because he doesn't want her to, or because she feels like she's unable to, then she'll do whatever she finds the courage to do. 

 

Her heart is so loud, though, as she picks his sweatshirt up, that she almost doesn't understand what he says to her then -not that the hesitant way he speaks makes it any easier for her. 

 

He straightens up slightly, puzzled, then gets up, but remains where he is.

 

"Th--that's mine--" she hears him say, as she brings her backpack to the side and opens it to put the sweatshirt in, with cautious movements, not daring to look back at him now. 

 

He says it like he's just trying to inform her -to kindly let her know that she's making a mistake, without an ounce of indignation in his voice, or anything else she'd expect to hear from someone who's having their stuff being stolen right under their nose. 

 

Or rather, like he's pointing out something that doesn't make sense, and he's genuinely trying to figure out what he's seeing -not to prompt her togive the sweatshirt back, but to provide a logical explanation.  

 

In any case, he reacts nothing like the way she'd expect him to react.  

 

And she _doesn't_ provide any explanation. 

She closes her backpack, finally looking at him. 

 

Her voice is the smallest it's ever been, but he hears her. 

 

"--I know."

 

She stands there, facing him, her heart still hammering against her ribs. 

 

His eyes widen slightly at her response, but he doesn't move. 

 

His lips part a bit then, as if to speak. Yet no sound comes out, and he closes his mouth, swallowing. 

 

 

Before her legs give out, she clears her throat. 

Then walks away in direction of the locker rooms -while he simply stands there.

 

 

 

The following morning, when she arrives at her locker, she exhales a shaky breath. 

 

 

All the notes she left have been taken. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Letters I've written / never meaning to send / Just what the truth is? / I can't say anymore / Cause I love you / Yes I love you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88uv7S9Bz9U)


	12. My smile hurts, my heart breaks

 

 

                     

 

 

The walk from MS High school to the house isn't short.

 

The sky is already dark when Ben walks down his street. 

 

Six notes total are in his right pocket. His hand is clenched on them. He can't let go. They could fall out if he does, he could lose them.

 

Yet, he has to wonder what's the point of having taken them, or keeping them, if he's not gonna gather the courage to read them. 

 

To take his ruler to get the notes out of Jones' locker's door, then hide somewhere to read them is something he's done he doesnt know how many times, but it doesn't feel the same at all tonight.

 

Not after what happened an hour ago.

 

Tonight, after rushing to her locker, in an almost empty school, he eyes the pieces of paper with a breathing barely under control.

When he reaches to remove the notes, his hand is shaking. 

 

And when he's got them all in his palms, he can't open them. His stomach in a knot. 

 

So he shoves them in his right pocket. 

 

...it doesn't feel the same tonight. 

 

This afternoon, Jones found him on the soccer field. And just five minutes before that, he never even would have _dared_ phrasing it this way. Implying that she'd ever look for him.  

 

And maybe she wasn't. 

 

Come to think of it, is that important?

 

Is that important, if she looked at him in silence, instead of insulting him, or glaring at him, or simply go on her way -then proceeded to  _fucking take his sweatshirt and leave with it?_

 

It's not that there's any doubt, then, that something's off. Of course something's off. 

 

 

Yet acknowledging that isn't what sends Ben rushing to her locker, after he stood there for maybe ten minutes, alone in the middle of the soccer field where she left him. 

 

A feeling creeps in his chest as soon as she walks away, a feeling that settles slowly but surely very deep in his bones.

 

There's no concrete reason for him to even entertain the idea. 

 

Still, he needs to be sure.

 

The notes he's walked by several times despite his best effort not to ever go anywhere close her locker, and to not look at it; the notes he's been refusing to collect since she's explicitly told him  _she hated him_ , loud and clear, _those notes are in his hands_ fifteen minutes after she left with his sweatshirt. 

 

He's of the weak kind. 

Weak for taking them. Weaker for not being able to read them. 

 

 

When he's finally home, he's in need of a distraction, anything to delay the inevitable, so he ignores Leia who's sitting at the kitchen table and walks straight to the phone on the wall, unfortunately in the same room. 

 

That's something he has to do anyway -another revelation the day has brought. 

 

"Wha--" he hears her croak as she picks her head up from the magazine she was reading. "Benjamin, it's cold outside!"

 

"I know Mom, I come from the outside," he remarks flatly, dialing one of the few numbers he knows by heart, without looking at her. 

 

"Well aren't you cold?" She shoots back, exasperated. "Why are you only wearing a t-shirt, are you trying to be sick?"

 

It's ringing, so he doesn't answer her. 

 

It's ringing. It's always easier to be bold when it's about someone else than yourself. 

 

He glances at Leia. She's looking at him attentively. 

So he turns, and distractedly pulls on the phone's cord to watch it bounce. 

 

Thank God, Sofia is the one who answers. Better her than her husband. She likes him.

 

"Mrs Lopez, how you doing?"

 

"Benjamin! It's been so long--" she chirps.

 

He chuckles nervously: "I know--"

 

"I don't even remember what you look like!"

 

"I---uh, I'll drop by soon, I haven't--"

 

"How's your Mamma? And your Dad?"

 

"Good, they're good."

 

"You stay out of trouble, you hear me?"

 

"I will," he clears his throat. 

 

"I know you're a good kid, Benjamin. Don't be a stranger."

 

"Uh, yeah. Okay. Thanks?" He returns awkwardly.

 

Blessedly, she decides to stop there:

"Let me call him, he's in his room, and you know him, the music is so loud --- _FINN!_ "

 

Ben gets the phone away from his ear with a wince.

 

 _"Finley Lopez!!"_  He hears her yell again. 

 

A muffled  _WHAT_  finally comes, followed by a  _Ben's on the phone, come down here_. 

 

"...Alo?"

 

"Uh, hey, wanna see  _Pulp Fiction_  on Saturday?"

 

 

...earlier today, Dameron finds Ben when he's alone at a table in the canteen, and invites him to see that movie that's been released recently, and that's somehow playing at  _Utopia_ , the only small theater they have in town.

At first, Solo recoils.

 

He's not into that kind of movie, but also, he'd be lying if he said he hasn't been avoiding Dameron. 

 

He feels bad, though, because Dameron is almost squirming, probably wondering what he's done wrong, and now he's attempting to fix it despite not being the one who broke whatever's broken. 

 

He just has no idea. 

 

But Ben gets distracted from all of this when Dameron offers-probably in the hope that it'll help him accept the invitation: 

 

"You can --I don't know, invite Lopez or whatever -if you want."

 

And at first, Ben is annoyed. 

 

Because two hours earlier barely, when he's at his locker, Lopez asks him why he doesn't train with Dameron anymore,  _or whatever_. 

 

And, reminded of what happened on the soccer pitch a week and a half before, reminded of what Jones said to him then, reminded of how she laughed with Poe and of how  _easy_  it was for Dameron to talk to her, Ben snaps at Lopez. 

 

" _What's with your fucking obsession with Dameron anyway?_ "

 

Lopez looks down then, embarrassed for a reason Ben can't make out in that moment, then mutters defensively:

"I'm not  _obsessed_  with Dameron, I don't even know him..."

 

He glares at Ben, and ends the exchange with a low yet sharp "... _Dickhead"_ , before walking away. 

 

Ben doesn't mind, or care.

He fucking hates everyone. 

 

So yes, Ben is annoyed when Dameron proposes he invites Lopez to see a movie he himself doesn't even want to see.

 

He's annoyed -until something clicks. 

 

 

Now, especially after what happened that morning, and despite Lopez no being the spiteful kind, Ben at least expects him to ask  _where_ , or  _why_  when in turn he proposes they go see  _Pulp Fiction_ , but instead Lopez shoots back:

 

"Fuck no, how about  _Star Trek_?"

 

 _Language_ , Lopez's mother scolds behind him. 

 

Doesn't matter. 

 

"Okay,  _Star Trek_  then, I don't care. Meet me at Utopia at seven."

 

"Couldn't wait until tomorrow to tell me?"

 

"No, I couldn't."

 

"O-kay?"

 

Ben pauses then. He's not hesitating, just quickly assessing how he should say it, finding there aren't that many way to go. 

 

"Lopez?"

 

"What?"

 

He clears his throat. 

"Dameron will come with, you're fine with that, right?"

 

The silence that follows, however short, is telling.  

"...uh, yeah,  _yeahwhatever_ , invite who you want."

 

Jaw forward, mad at himself that he's missed the obviousness of this for so long, he accidentally retorts a bit too sharply:

"Well I invited  _him_."

 

Thankfully, Lopez doesn't seem to mind or notice, and Ben can practically hear him shrug. 

 

"...okay, whatever, Solo."

 

"Yeah.  _Whatever_."

 

 

When he hangs up, he turns to find that Leia's ogling him. 

 

"I didn't know you liked that  _Star Trek_  thing?"

 

From time to time, whenever she's home and he's home, which isn't often, she'll act like she has the slightest clue what he likes and doesn't like. 

 

He goes around her to open the fridge and takes the bottle of Sunny D out. 

"I don't." 

 

She frowns looking up at him: "Isn't that the movie you're going to see?"

 

He takes a few gulps of the orange juice, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before putting it back in the fridge.

"I'm not going anywhere. Lopez and Dameron are."

 

She's visibly confused, but he's not about to explain to her what he's trying to do. Mercifully, she makes it easy by dropping it.

 

Hand back in his pocket, closing on the notes, he grabs his backpack and heads for the stairs: 

"I'll be in my room." 

 

"Ben?"

 

He stops in his track, and turns to her. 

 

"If you do leave the house on Saturday, just let me know, okay?"

 

Such an innocent, rightful request.

 

But Ben really hopes he's keeping whatever's going on inside under control, and that nothing is showing. He grits his teeth briefly before muttering: 

"Sure."

 

He likes Leia. He does.

 

It's just a bit harder each day to remember that he does, and he has to remind himself sometimes. 

 

He's given up on that with Han. 

 

Maybe he still hasn't given up on Leia and won't because she hasn't given up on him either, and even if her attempts at caring for him always ring out of tune, she does try.

 

Still, he's fantasized a lot about telling her.

 

All those times she suddenly remembers she's a mother, and asks him his whereabouts, or if something bothers him, or what he'd like to eat for dinner, after weeks at a time of awkward silence, polite nods and unfunny jokes, he'd like to tell her. 

 

...all those Saturdays a year ago, when he was going at the Millers' a few houses down the street, did she ask him then where he was going? 

 

When he would be gone for hours?

 

\--not that he's told anyone about it.

 

Mrs Miller wasn't legally divorced yet. And him, and Lopez, Dameron or Evan, don't ever talk about those things -ever. 

 

He's got another confirmation of that just today.

 

That's why none of them know about Jones either.

 

Even if they did talk about _those things_ , Mrs Miller had insisted enough that she depended on his silence for him to keep quiet anyway. 

 

And before long -five months after it all started, to be precise- she moved away without a warning, and it had been like it never happened. 

 

He's never been anything to that woman but a clumsy, healthy, easy-to-summon, easy-to-leave seventeen year old neighbor, whose parents were always looking the other way. 

 

And he was just trying to get the attention where he could get it. 

 

This woman -thirteen years her elder- felt trapped, and he did too, and that was common ground enough he supposes. 

It was bound to end the way it started: abruptely, with little regard for his opinion. 

 

Everytime he's felt a connection with someone he's been shown that it was all in his head. 

 

 

And now here he is, in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed -staring at Jones' notes. 

 

There's a bunch of them.

For days, he hasn't written her, and he hasn't collected her notes either. 

 

Her determination writing him anyway, as the notes multiply day after day, makes ignoring them close to impossible for him. 

 

 

Yet he can't read them, nor write her while still protecting what little honesty they shared with one another, after getting such a blatant proof of her hate for him. 

\---what he thought was a blatant proof until today. 

 

 

The look she gives him then, in front of Dameron, more than the words she uses maybe, is what brings him all the way down a pit he thought couldn't get any deeper. 

 

A wake up call of sort. 

 

She doesn't write to  _Ben Solo_. Whoever she hopes is writing her, it isn't him. 

 

He's forever the cocksucker who poured milk on his tray when she was on canteen duty to her. 

 

That careless assumption she makes when she tells him that not even his father likes him is such a throwback of how they met.

Except in place of pity, she's unknowingly telling the truth this time.

 

Allowing him to find out that he hardly can handle it better. 

 

Yet he doesn't glare at her like he did that day they first saw each other. 

 

He doesn't provoke her, doesn't hurt her back. 

 

He walks away with the one single information that matters. 

 

She hates him. 

 

 

Better be hurt, then, and have her hurt, have her leaving notes to someone she'll now think let her down or lost interest in her, than continue to have her unknowingly writing to someone she can hardly breathe the same air as. 

 

Only now, he's about to read the notes she's adressed to that person who let her down, and his heart is in his throat, threatening to burst out of his mouth. 

 

_Because something's off._

...and he's starting to suspect he's been trying to ignore something was off for a while now. 

 

She's numbered them.

That's new. 

 

He could throw them away. 

He could just throw them away. 

 

...he picks up the first one, as it's indicated on it, and opens it, unaware that he's stopped breathing. 

 

 

**_Ben Solo hates me_ **

**_he's hated me on sight and I don't know why_ **

**_do you know him?_ **

 

 

Just like that, it's impossible to swallow. It's impossible to take any air in. 

 

Reflexively, he rubs his hand on his mouth, feeling his pulse pound in his ears. 

_And he's just sitting there reading a note._

 

One by one though, he opens them. 

 

He reads them. 

 

 

**_Ben Solo has made me feel miserable but_ **

 

**_the notes you left at my locker_ **

**_made me feel so much better_ **

 

 

**_every day it's the first thing I think about_ **

 

**_the only thing I look forward to_ **

**_the only thing I get up for_ **

 

**_my smile hurts when I find one_ **

**_my heart breaks when I don't_ **

 

 

**_I was hoping to find a note at my locker one day_ **

**_and I found Solo standing there instead_ **

 

**_he was alone in the hallway_ **

 

**_I only had to wait until he left_ **

 

 

**_whoever you are and for whatever reason_ **

 

**_you'd write me every day but now you don't anymore_ **

**_and I feel so fucking crushed_ **

 

**_whatever I did to make you stop_ **

 

**_whatever I said_ **

**_whatever it is that hurt you_ **

 

 

**_I hate myself for it_ **

 

 

**_I wish I could undo it_ **

 

 

 

**_I'm sorry Ben_ **

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1.
> 
> Song: 
> 
>  
> 
> [Don't dream it's over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjBwAYIxUso)
> 
>  
> 
> 2.
> 
> The _amazing moodboard_ at the beginning of this chapter is brought to you by [violethoure666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/violethoure666/pseuds/violethoure666), a gifted reylo writer, go ahead and check out what she does -also, here's her [tumblr](http://r-e-a-l-m-a-t-h.tumblr.com/post/179220623434/cannes-2016)  
>  T H A N K Y O U 
> 
> 3.
> 
> I HOPED NOBODY WOULD GUESS UNTIL THE BIG REVEAL, but ---  
> Congrats to the Guest and their "crazy theory" about Lopez, quote unquote: "Is he Finn?" (a day ago)
> 
> BITCH YES HE IS 
> 
> and to KittyHawke: "I'm here for Lopez and Dameron" (today) 
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you all so so so so M U C H for reading, your comments make life worth living ( "too intense" isn't a thing, shut up)


	13. A cartoon character

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo---something happened this morning: the one and only Lilithsaur, a fucking legend at this point in the fandom, has blessed us with [an illustration for this fic](http://lilithsaur.tumblr.com/post/179266074538/this-a-gift-for-plantsandlamps-animal-on-ao3)  
> As usual, her art is nothing short of perfect. Don't hesitate to check it out if you don't know her yet (hard to believe) along with the rest of her fanart. She's seriously one of the most gifted among us. 
> 
> Needless to say I'm still trying to recover.  
> Thank you so so much,  
> I simply adore it

Ben breathes in. Out.

 

Fuck.

 

He squeezes his eyes shut, focuses on the movements of his ribs.

The boys' restroom isn't the greatest place on earth to take big gulps of air. But he's not getting out of this stall just yet.

 

He'll have to. Eventually.

 

He's---he's--

_\--a fucking-_

 

 

Someone enters. He doesn't mean to hold his breath, still--

Whoever's on the other side of that stall is taking a piss in an urinal. They're out of the room less than a minute later.

Without washing their hands. Fucking gross.

 

This is as good a moment as ever to examine his life, probably.

What the _fat fuck_ is he doing?

 

 

He closes his eyes, exhales sharply, then gets out of the stall, and faces the mirror above one of the three sinks.

 

He thought he could do it, he really thought he could do it.

 

Now, he wonders why he's bothered coming to school at all.

 

It's recess, and to make sure he doesn't meet Jones, he's hiding in the fucking restroom.

 

\--what the fuck is wrong with him?

 

Not having slept a single minute last night sure doesn't help seeing things clearly. He's exhausted.

 

And he knows, deep down, that that's not only caused by last night's insomnia.

 

He feels like he's been out of breath for the past two months.

 

 

He brings his palms to his eyes,

 

 

What's the plan, hiding in the restroom everytime there's a slight chance he might meet her?

 

They don't have English class today, and it's a tremendous relief. But they'll have English class eventually.

 

Can't he just be in front of her and talk?

Can't he?

 

_\--to say what?_

 

He turns the faucet on to splash his face with water. Then wipes himself dry with the sweatshirt he's wearing.

 

When he looks up in the mirror, the new, brighter layer of paint on the wall behind him, that paint that he had to use to cover the graffiti Lopez and him made earlier this year seems to mock him.

 

The door opens abruptely, and he jumps, rushing to a stall when it occurs to him mid-way that it's just _sooo fucking weird, why would he do that_ , so he comes to a complete stop -making it look even weirder, then straightens awkwardly in front of a _very_ confused Lopez.

 

"...Solo?"

 

"Yup, what?" He asks, his eyebrows raised high on his forehead, lips pressed tight.

 

With a perplexed expression Lopez quickly glance at what must be the wet hair framing Ben's face.

"...what the fuck are you doing?" he asks, tone flat.

 

"I'm in the bathroom, what do you think?"

 

"I mean... you got up, out-of-nowhere, and ran inside without telling us anything."

 

A shiver runs down Ben's spine, and he involuntarly winces.

 

They're in the schoolyard, five minutes earlier, with Lopez and Evan, when he spots Jones getting out of the science building.

Just like that, without a word, he's gone.

 

"An emergency?" Lopez asks.

 

"Yes, Mommy, I almost shat my pants."

 

"...o-kay..."

 

"--I'm dehydrated as fuck, it's really bad," Ben continues, tone dry as can be.

 

"I don't smell anything."

Lopez isn't really suspicious now, as much as he's bored.

 

_"Why would you want to smell it?"_

 

"You're just ...acting weird, you've been acting weird for a while," Lopez replies, dodging the question. 

 

In turn, Ben deflects immediately.

"You're gonna let me give this another go, now? Or you wanna stay there to wipe me clean?"

 

"No, I'm good," Lopez mutters, turning around finally.

 

"You sure? Don't hesitate if you're having any second thought."

 

"...Dickhead," he hears again before the bathroom door closes on Lopez.

 

Ben enters a stall. 

Square one.

 

_Is that the longest fucking recess they've  ever had or what?_

 

In theory, nothing has changed since yesterday. He's still avoiding Jones.

He's been avoiding her for the past two weeks.

 

But everything has changed now, hasn't it?

 

What she would have said to him, and thought of him, had they met another way, would have forever been left to the imagination, if he hadn't taken her notes yesterday.

Regrets and hypothesis are comforting that way; they leave room for a sadness that feeds off a thousand worlds, a thousand lives, when Life, _real life_ shits all over you.

 

And it's not like that anymore, not at all. There are no _ifs_ left.

It's the realest it can be.

 

 

Yesterday, he was avoiding Jones as a necessary evil. He was enduring it.

 

Trying his best to act like she wasn't the only thing he cared about, obstinately not looking at her as if she wasn't the only thing he wanted to look at.

 

Now he feels it in his stomach, in his weak legs--

 

-he's avoiding her out of pure, simple, plain _cowardice_.

 

There's only one paved-with-gold way to go, and he's digging his heels in the ground to delay the inevitable.

 

 

In the span of one night, he's transformed into a _downright cartoon character_ , looking left and right everywhere he goes, speeding inexplicably when he's afraid he might meet her.

 

-it's almost as if he's tip toeing in the hallways, reflexively hiding the lower half of his face behind the collar of his sweatshirt.

 

 _It's okay_ , he thinks. He'll overcome it at some point. He will.

 

 

The bell rings.

He passes his head through the door to check if the cost is clear first, then darts in the hallway to his Chemistry class.

 

His teacher wouldn't believe his eyes.

 

Since last night, Ben's thoughts are on a constant loop, or rather a come-and-go between consternation:

- _she knew, god, she knew -_

 

...and incredulity:

_\---she knew? she knew??_

 

He thinks back to the very few moments they've faced each other and exchanged a handful of words; to how she's looked at him...

 

_...she knew?_

 

It's noon when he catches another glimpse of her in a hallway, before he dashes away.

 

Just a long enough glimpse for him to see that she's with Dameron, and that he's talking to her, moving his hands around, but she's barely responsive --she just gives little nods with her eyes cast down.

 

It seems that Ben's throat get tighter by the minute.

He can't imagine she'd look like that because he hasn't gone to find her first thing this mornin, can't imagine she'd depend on anything he does to be happy ---still, he feels miserable, because he can't imagine her being unhappy because of anyone other than him.

 

Feeling miserable isn't the same as feeling brave, though.

 

So fifteen minutes later when he's getting a few books from his locker while practically hiding in it, and that a hand falls on his shoulder with a _Hey_ , Ben _jumps_ \---- _again_.

 

Then quickly looks around.

Dameron's alone.

 

He lets out a heavy sigh, then registers that Dameron's looking at him the same way Lopez was earlier.

 

Bringing his attention back to the content of his locker, Ben grits his teeth. " _What?"_

 

He can feel that Dameron's fazed about his reaction, but he doesn't mention it at first, and to counteract it his own tone is way too chirpy.

"Still good for tomorrow night?"

 

Ben asks without looking at him.

"--what? What's going on tomorrow night?"

 

The enthusiasm in Dameron's voice drops instantly.

"Wh--you're kidding? --we're not going to see _Pulp Fiction_? I thought you said..."

 

"Ah, ffffff---right, _right_. Yeah, don't worry. Tomorrow, _sure_ , _absolutely_ -no problem," Ben hurries to assure him, words rushing out of his mouth.

 

When he looks at Dameron, he's met with distrust.

"Um... what the fuck is going on with you?"

 

Ben represses a sigh. With everything that's on his mind he's been taking in and out of his backpack the wrong books ten times in the span of one minute.

"What."

 

"You're like, really nervous."

 

"I'm not."

 

"Okay, case closed."

A pause, before he continues, hesitant:

"Uh, I, uuuh... I was just wondering--"

 

But Dameron doesn't finish his sentence.

Still Ben doesn't completely pick up on his friend's discomfort, and he closes his locker with a clueless "Mmh?" when he faces him.

 

Dameron's leaning one shoulder against the lockers, and if he had longer hair, Ben is sure he would be twiddling a lock right now.

 

"Is --have-- have you invited Lopez, after all? Or is it just us?"

 

For the first time since his phonecall yesterday Ben's blessedly distracted from his own insecurities.

"Yes, Dameron, I've invited Lopez," he confirms, leaning against the lockers himelf. Then he feigns to add as an afterthought:

"...I hope it's not a problem."

 

Unknowingly unleashing the beast.

 

"Oh, I mean, _no_ , _not at all_ , like, I don't--I don't care, _it's fine_ , whoever you want to invite is--- _fine_ , that's really fine, _whatever_. Really, it's like," Dameron shakes his head, searching for words, apparently, even though he ends up just repeating what he just said:

"--not a problem _at all_ , invite who you want. I don't --I don't really know him, so... I trust that, --if, if you--"

 

Dameron would have probably never ever deemed the sentence long enough if the look on Ben's face -eyes wide and shoulders rigid as he turns his head a bit on his right- hadn't brought him to a very sudden stop.

 

Jones is walking toward them. 

Her steps terribly unsure.

Her eyes on Ben.

 

She's not able to hold his gaze more than two seconds when he looks back at her, though.

 

 

She slows her steps the closer she gets, very hesitant to continue yet not stopping at any point, her hands joined at her stomach -a sheer contrast of how she's behaved around him in the past.

 

... he's so petrified, he barely can even swallow.

 

 

Resignation sinks in his limbs and plants him there.

Nowhere to run.

 

His heart, meanwhile, is actively pumping blood at an insane rate.

 

He doesn't know what to do, and in fact, he can't do anything even if he wanted to.

 

He senses that even Dameron considerably tenses on his left, when he stops leaning against the lockers and slowly straightens up.

 

Given what happened the last time the three of them were together, Ben can understand why.

Dameron can't handle conflict. When they were little he'd always surrender to Ben just to avoid them being mad at each other for more than three minutes.

 

Despite her hesitation, Jones can pride herself in having more courage than he'll ever have, because it maybe takes her only a few seconds -the longest seconds there are, but still- to close the distance between them, her head down.

 

He doesn't know what he expects to happen. His mind is blank. His eyes don't leave her.

 

When she's only a feet apart from him, the closest they've ever been, essentially finding herself between him and Dameron, she slowly, very slowly raises a hand--

 

-and carefully, cautiously, fingers slightly shaking--

 

...slips a folded piece of paper near the lock of his locker.

 

Right under Ben's nose.

 

Right in front of Dameron's face.

 

Nobody's fucking breathing.

 

 

Ben's not moving at all -as for Jones, she stays there for two seconds at most, and he barely hears a shaky breath leave her, before she turns without a word and walks away.

 

Ben looks back at Dameron just in time to see him blink at the piece of paper with wide eyes -for a second only, before he innocently reaches for it.

 

...nothing like seeing _a hand that isn't his_ attempting to get anywhere close that piece of paper to fully wake Ben up from head to toe.

 

He pushes Dameron out of the way and sharply pulls the note out of the slit, his jaw forward, gritting his teeth.

 

To that, Dameron's eyes open _the widest they can_ -and his gasp, then, is the longest and the loudest Ben has been given the chance to hear in his entire life.

 

" _WHAT_."

 

"Shut up. Shut- _up_ ," Ben hisses immediately, teeth clenched, crowding Dameron to prompt him to be quiet -and failling.

 

"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT--"

 

"Shut _UP_. Shut the fuck-up, Dameron, _shutup!_ "

 

"WHAT the FUCK, is going on-- Solo, what the fuck, _what the actual fuck??_ "

 

When it becomes clear that Dameron can't be calmed down, Ben walks away from him with long strides.

Dameron follows him, huffing.

 

"Solo ---wha---since when-----is this a thing?---she, she's--Solo--- _BEN_."

 

Talk about being at a loss for words.

 

Ben pushes the bathroom door open, and a second later he's locking himself in a stall.

 

Dameron's on his heels, but he doesn't get inside the stall with him -thank god.

 

 

With trembling hands, Ben immediately opens the note.

 

 

There's an adress.

 

And a few words.

 

_**If you want to come on saturday** _

_**my parents usually leave at six on the weekend** _

 

 

Ben blinks -before realizing he's been holding his breath. He lets out a shaky exhale.

 

"What does it say?"

 

Ben looks up on his right, where Dameron is peering from above the wall. "Can't see shit from here."

 

 

Ben shoves the note in his pocket.

"It says _Poe Dameron has a very small penis._ "

 

 

"Hilarious."

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [When I'm alone, and I'm daydreaming / I dream about being in your arms / I dream that I whisper to you / A declaration / My declaration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLF0VYmNYV4)


	14. A good sign

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PEOPLE
> 
> We've been blessed two times. Obviously we all have excellent karmas to deserve this: last chapter [Lilithsaur](http://lilithsaur.tumblr.com/post/179266074538/this-a-gift-for-plantsandlamps-animal-on-ao3) provided us with some gorgeous fanart, and now, it's [imnosaint](https://im-no-saint.tumblr.com/post/179316029210/i-am-back-and-we-have-plantsandlamps-to-thank-for)'s turn. 
> 
> I'm honestly overwhelmed, it's so beautiful. I _cannot_ thank you enough.  
>  Please give those artists the love they deserve
> 
> Thank you all so so much for reading, I read each and every comment -I'm truly sorry if I haven't answered them lately, my health has left me with very little energy, and I figured you all prefered me to use it to write updates instead of using it to reply to comments -but eventually _I will_. For now just know that I read them and that they make me utterly happy.  
>  Thank you <3<3<3<3

 

The shutters of Rey's window are always left ajar.

 

It's noon, and she still hasn't gotten up.

 

The blanket is pulled up to her eyes.

 

She barely opens an eye, with a lift of her eyebrow, when she hears the stairs creak.

 

Her parents never come up to the second floor.

Their bedroom is downstairs, along with everything that's important to them, and when they have an information to give her, whatever it is, they very often yell it from the kitchen.

They're not the type to yell, but if it keeps them from climbing stairs, they will.

 

Must be a bit strange to them that she hasn't gotten out of her bedroom yet.

She never sleeps late on the week-end, despite not having any reasons to get up.

 

Rey hasn't felt at home anywhere for a long time now, not at any of the places they've moved in in the past five years, and regardless of how much sleep she gets at night, she hates staying in bed, hates staying in her room -even while cherishing the very few belongings she keeps there.

 

That she's still under the blanket at noon is unusual, but her parents generally need a lot more than that to start acting all weird and come anywhere near her room.

 

The wooden floor creaks in the corridor under the weight of steps getting closer, then the door opens with a weak squeak.

 

Her father's tone and volume of voice are fairly normal -what betrays his state is his breathing between the words. A touch too heavy.

 

« Rey ? Little mouse ? »

 

Her voice comes out muffled by the pillow :

« What. »

 

« With your mamma we're going at Regi's. »

 

« Cool. »

 

« We're leaving now. »

 

That's new.

 

Her parents don't usually leave the house that early. They've always prefered to wait until it's late enough to leave, so that whatever state they're in can relatively pass as socially acceptable.

 

And if they're going at Regi's, she can expect they won't be back before tomorrow night.

 

« We left his phone number on the fridge, if there's any problem, just call » he adds, and Rey resists the urge to snort.

So very responsible from two of the most clueless people on earth.

 

« Got it. You can go now. »

 

There's a moment of silence, before she hears the door creak again.

 

Her eyes flick open.

« Frank ! »

 

« Yes mouse, what ? » she hears from the corridor.

 

« Is there something to eat for me while you're gone ? »

 

Another moment of silence that just screams shame.

But she won't feel guilty for reminding him of the one time they left for two days, when she was thirteen, with just enough in the whole house for a single meal. Even if it's never happened again since then.

 

« Yes, » she hears, voice low and defeated. « There is, mouse. Everything's in the fridge. »

 

« -kay. See you. »

 

 

All night, sleep comes and goes, and this morning, she can't pull herself out of bed.

The first ray of sunshine she feels on her cheek tells her it's late enough to get up, that the sun has passed the roof of the Marianos. But she doesn't get up.

 

Yesterday, when she gets no sign of Solo, after finding that the notes she left at her locker were gone, and despite not being certain that he's indeed read them, she forces hersef through the most intense fear she's ever felt and walks up to him.

 

Whatever doubt she had about him reading her notes are gone the moment his eyes fall on her.

In the span of the two seconds she can bear holding his gaze, it's painfully obvious even to her that he looks as afraid as she is, but also expectant, knowing.

He doesn't look like someone who can't make sense of why she's here; he doesn't frown, or wince, or says anything indicating he's confused.

 

Instead, his eyes get rounder, and he stops moving entirely, silent completely -letting her approach.

 

She desperately wants to take that as a good sign.

 

He's real, materialized before her, and everything that's happened between them when they didn't even know it was happening is _real too now_.

 

The new ground they are on, everything that's being acknowledged--that he's the one who's written her all this time, that he's kept his identity hidden, that she's found out who he was but didn't stop writing him ; _the things_ he's written her, the things she replied to him - makes her feel like she's going to be _sick._

 

Never before has a piece of paper felt this heavy in her hand.

She still manages to bring it up and slide it in his locker, right under his eyes.

 

And when she does, she officially corners them both in a room where there's nothing left beside them.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. 

 

He can't utter a single syllable to her, and herself leaves without a word. Everything's been said anyway.

 

Then she's done all she could, and she waits.

_She waits._

 

Either for him to come and talk to her -at recess, in a hallway, in the schoolyard- either for her to find a note at her locker; _she waits, checks_ , checks some more, then tries when he doesn't come to her and when she doesn't find any note, to not give in to the horrifying sinking feeling that she--

 

-that she just might have ruined it all. Misunderstood. Overstepped.

 

Fucked up.

 

She bites her nail, a brand new habit she feels like forming seriously, squirms on her chair in class fighting the burn inside becoming more and more insistant with every hour that passes, trying to fight off the voice in her head telling her that whatever was written on those pieces of paper  _was only ever meant to stay on paper_.

 

Then she tells herself again and again that the day isn't over.

But it's Friday, and if he doesn't answer today, if he doesn't talk to her today, then she doesn't know how she'll be able to come back to school.

 

He will have made it truly clear to her that she's imagined it all.

 

She internally cringes, and _groans_ , and _whines_  at her stupidity thinking back to what she wrote on that note.

 

Feeling _so ashamed_ that she dared to invite him at her house, a shame only bound to intensify as hours pass, and the sky darkens, while she delays the moment she'll have to go home, staying late at school, not daring to check her locker before it's really time to leave and she has no other choice...

 

...then finding nothing when she finally does.

 

He's probably even left school early, for all she knows.

 

Either way, he's chosen to act like nothing happened.

 

Nothing happened to him, or small somethings... Words that were meant to exist on paper only.

 

Once at home, she skips dinner. If her parents were the type to care, they're not here anyway. 

 

She doesn't bother to try to fool herself and finds her bed immediately, still dressed, burying herself under the covers like she wishes she could bury the humiliation, the hoplessness one feels when happiness has come to completely and entirely depend on the actions of a single person.

 

He's ignored her for two weeks, and she should have known then. Spared herself.

 

That he stopped writing her and taking her notes simply because he wanted to stop, and not for any other reasons than that. 

 

Even in her defeat, she's unable to save what little dignity she has left and holds Solo's jacket close, _so, so close_ to her.

Stirring the shame doing so, teasing the hurt with the irony of it -of her attempting to find comfort in the fabric, in its smell: in something that is yet another reminder of why she's hurt in the first place.

 

Whatever name she dreamed of giving _this_ , she now can see that none of this feels like falling -her body is heavy, so heavy in her bed.

The night comes, the morning comes, and she just lies there, heavy, unable to really sleep.

 

She's not falling, she's sinking.

 

 

The front door slamming shut ten minutes after Frank came to her room is all she needs to get up after all, she finds.

 

She strips off her clothes, takes a hot shower that barely soothes her, then puts on her pajamas: green soccer shorts and a old white tank top with a small rooster near the heart.

 

She's feeling cold with her wet hair, but she still pads barefoot to the living-room this way, her eyes refusing to fully open.

 

There, she stops in her tracks.

 

The TV's on, muted. On the coffee table, there are one bottle of cheap gin that's almost empty, a bottle of cheap scotch that's almost full, three dirty plates and one empty pack of cigarettes.

 

A piece of pizza turned over on the carpet between the coffee table and the couch.

 

Out of everything that happened the past weeks, _this_ , is what sets the dormant rage in her aflame.

 

She literaly pulls on her hair, eyes shut hard, teeth gritting.

_She fucking hates them._

 

It's not the mess -not the alcohol, not the pizza, not the TV left on –it's _everything_ , everything in her fucking life that brings her to the very edge, and she grabs a bottle about to throw it against the wall--

 

\--stopping mid-air, and groaning loudly instead.

 

It tastes like exhaustion, exasperation, frustration, something about being brought to her limits, but her throat gets _so so tight_ in a matter of seconds, and suddenly it tastes a lot more like despair.

 

And it's so hard to breathe. So hard to think.

So hard to stand there.

 

She doesn't analyse what her hands do next, she just lets it happen.

Her fingers expertly unscrew the cap and brings the bottle to her mouth.

 

She's never tasted scotch, and it's fucking awful, she doesn't get why anyone would willingly pour that in their throat.

She lifts her chin up and takes several big gulps in a row.

 

It burns her chest, makes her eyes water, and she represses a gag. Disgusting.

 

She waits a few seconds before drinking three more gulps.

 

A hot tear rolls down her face, but she sighs, calmed down somewhat –or rather, light headed already.

She lets herself down on the couch.

 

She doesn't know how much more she drinks, but when she feels the lower half of her face go slack, she puts the bottle down and turns the TV's volume on.

 

There's some report about OJ Simpson. She winces and changes the channel.

She zaps a few times until she stumbles upon an episode of _Rugrats_.

 

Perfect.

 

She pulls the old plaid on her and lies down, eyes on the screen.

 

She falls asleep in the middle of an episode of _Sister Sister_.

 

 

 

It's dark.

 

Not completely, but much darker than when she fell asleep.

 

She turns her head to the TV, squinting at Michael Jordan drinking Pepsi.

 

Her mouth is dry, and she grunts, sitting up.

That was a long fucking nap.

 

She shivers, and tries to work her eyes more open. The next commercial yells at her, so she grabs the remote control and turns the TV off with a huff and a scowl.

 

Silence takes over the whole house.

She lets her head fall in her hands, elbows on her knees and eyes closed, and sighs.

 

Her eyes open wide.

She jerks her head up.

 

There's been a knock at the door.

 

Solo immediately comes to her mind, and her heart's in her throat in an instant.

But then, it's so silent again, that her stomach clenches painfully at the idea that she might have imagined it because of how badly she wants it to be real.

 

Even if she doesn't feel the effect of alcohol at all anymore, she did drink, and the nap left her a bit disoriented, and--

 

She doesn't even remember getting up, but she's not moving now, holding her breath, unable to do anything.

 

 

Another knock, and her stomach drops.

 

 

She very quietly pads to the front door.

The wood creak feebly under her weight. 

She's very hesitant to ask who it is through the door, in case it's not someone she expects -even more hesitant to open it.

 

She's been alone at home a thousand times, from a very young age, and she never opens the door to anyone when she doesn't know who's on the other side.

She's also careful not to ever let her presence known.

 

So silently she goes to the kitchen window, and so as to not draw attention to her, very slowly and slightly pushes open the curtains.

From where she is, she can't see the porch, no matter how she places herself.

 

No need though: less than a minute later, she's able to clearly see who knocked.

 

Solo's leaving her porch to walk back down the small path that cuts her frontyard in its middle. 

 

Solo's in her frontyard.

 

Solo's here. 

 

 

She runs to the door.

 

 

_"Solo!!"_

 

She's swung the door open, the cold instantly hitting her skin.

 

Solo stops. Then turns around.

 

He's standing there for long seconds, looking straight at her but not moving, his lips parted.

One hand in the pocket of another one of his tracksuit jacket, the other closed on his stomach.

 

He's here. A few feet away.

He's here.

 

She doesn't notice right away, but even from that distance she recognizes the piece of paper he's holding -it's the one she wrote her adress on.

 

She's staring back at him, her mouth opening a few times soundlessly, until he mercifully takes very slow steps back to the porch, his head down, nervously rubbing his mouth.

 

With each step he takes she feels her heart fighting harder to break her chest.

 

He comes to a stop at the bottom of the porch steps, and looks up at her, she can't say why--

 

She brings her hand higher on the door and opens it a bit wider, only then noticing her hands are trembling -from the cold, and because she feels the weakest she's ever felt, her legs wobbly, her whole body weightless, like she might float away at any moment.

 

She clears her throat, but it does nothing for her -she still speaks with a strangled voice: 

 

"I –I was asleep, I" -she stops, wincing and looking down when she realizes how much of a weirdo that makes her, then forces herself to correct: "I didn't hear you knocking, that's why--"

 

Her voice dies, for lack of air.

 

It's alright though.

 

A second later, Solo is slowly climbing the three steps to her.

 

Making it all the more difficult for her to breathe.

 

 

It takes him being this close then, for her to suddenly realize what she's wearing.

 

_FUCK._

 

She resists the most _pressing and intense urge_ ever to frantically run a hand in her hair and over her face --in search of what, she doesn't know- simply because she needs to _check_ , suddenly hyper aware of the fact that she's got no fucking clue what she looks like.

 

She focuses on being immobile instead, feeling her cheeks burn.

 

He blinks, frowns, looking down, then opens his mouth silently a few times before actual words come out of it:

 

"--do you..."

He swallows. "Should...—should I come in?"

 

She shuts her eyes with yet another wince: _how fucking stupid is she?_

 

"Yes!" she croaks, then shakes her head stepping aside: "Yes, come in", she breathes again. 

An instant later he's inside, and the sight of him _there_ , _in her house_ , when she closes the door behind him, makes her incredibly dizzy. It's as if everything around him looked different -and smaller.

 

As if she was just noticing how tall he was. As if she was truly seeing her house for the first time.

 

On that thought, she freezes when she follows his gaze.

 

He's looking at the coffee table.

 

 _FUCK_ _!_

 

She winces, _again_ , her shoulders a bit up because of the cold _and_ the embarrassment, and she hurries to the couch, bending to pick up the bottles, tucking them in the crook of her elbow and picking up the plates.

 

She can imagine that she's just bringing his attention a bit more to it, but she can't have him here and leave everything like this.

 

She'd like to say _that's not mine_ , but the idea of pointing out that her parents are the ones to blame for this doesn't enchant her either.

So she simply says nothing.

 

Letting the shame burn her lungs.

 

 

He just looks at her without a word.

 

She rushes to the kitchen to leave everything in the sink, out of his sight.

 

A terrifying thought crosses her mind then. _Does she smell like alcohol ?_

_Like her father ?_

 

The idea is unbearable to her.

 

 

She comes back a _complete stammering mess_ :

 

"I, I—I'm going-- upstairs, I need, just—for, for a minute, I need--"

 

_Guess he'll never know what I need because I am no longer able to finish a fucking sentence._

 

She runs up the stairs in an instant.

Leaving him there.

 

 

She rushes in the small bathroom next to her bedroom, and starts with shaky hands to brush her teeth in the most thorough fashion, afraid of leaving the faintest trace of alcohol, almost close to make her gum bleed -all the while staring at herself in the mirror.

 

Her hair doesn't look good, but it's okay, and she doesn't have the time to do anything about that anyway.

Her fucking pajamas, on the other hand, have to fucking go.

 

So she rushes to her bedroom next, careful to do so more or less quietly.

 

She goes straight to her wardrobe, and pushes the hangers left and right, opens a drawer, closes it.

 

She tells herself that what she picks isn't important as long as it's actual clothes, warmer than shorts and a tank top, yet she can't help but pay attention to what she looks at in the hope of magically finding an outfit pretty enough, one that would have appeared over night.

 

Her hands are still shaky.

 

...what an excellent idea she had, to tell him to come here.

Great fucking idea.

 

 

She stops moving entirely, and listens closely.

 

It's discreet, but she can hear the stairs creak.

 

Solo's coming upstairs.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Let's dance in style, let's dance for a while / Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies / Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5guhMw_EH0)
> 
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> I swear I'm not teasing you people -it would have been a chapter way too long if I didn't cut it^^


	15. A nestling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Brand new gorgeous fanart](https://im-no-saint.tumblr.com/post/179452521880/i-really-loved-this-scene-from-plantsandlamps), people, by the same Angelic Angel(TM) - imnosaint - who's been angeling again, this time for chapter 13  
>  Please, please _p l e a s e_ go and give her the love she deserves on tumblr (link above).

Her mind goes blank.

 

His steps on the wooden floor are so unsure -it doesn't help her calm down one bit. 

 

Whether because her heart's in her throat, or because she wants to listen closely, she's not moving an inch.

 

He's hesitating. She hears him stop, understanding that he's trying to make out where he is, where he's going--

 

More accurately, where  _she_  is. Likely listening good, the way she is.

But she's not moving at all, her back to her wardrobe at the far wall of her bedroom, facing the door she left slightly ajar.

 

The night hasn't fallen yet.

 

She'd like to call him, ask him what he needs, but her jaw is too tensed, she just opens her eyes wide on the door and listens, her breathing getting in the way, too loud suddenly to her own ears despite breathing relatively normally.

 

She hears two more steps, then another stop.

 

Then, because her eyes are fixed on the door, she catches through the opening the very tips of fingers approaching it, before they gently, very slowly push it open.

 

The second he appears in her sight, standing there in the doorway, their eyes meet.

She blinks, heart stuttering, wishing she could articulate a single syllable to ask him what he's looking for.

 

He works his jaw and looks at her desk, likely to avert his eyes from hers rather than by any real interest.

One hand is at his side, the other still inside one of the pockets of his oversized shorts reaching his knees and  that she's seen him wear a lot.

 

He dropped his jacket somewhere downstairs to reveal another one of his large, shapeless sweatshirt.

Black basketball shoes, with white socks.

 

"--do you want me to leave?"

 

It's barely said high enough that she hears him, still she envies him for how even his voice is, when she has so much trouble letting out the air she inhales.

 

"...no... ?"

 

It ends in a question because she means to ask  _why?_  but doesn't.

 

He just keeps his eyes from going back on her, and instead takes a wary step in, stopping a second, then another one, probably when he sees she doesn't protest.

 

He stands there. And she looks at him, from the other side of the room – her single bed between them.

 

For some reason it's only now that he's physically in her room, that she realizes he can  _see everything_ , and the impression is much more charged here, than downstairs.

 

Through his eyes she sees her room like for the first time since they've moved in, unable to do anything else than follow exactly where his gaze goes.

 

To be fair, she has reasons to be nervous, because although nothing transpires in his expression, -not a blink, not a movement of his lips, nothing- he's really taking his time to coldly study everything.

As if to assess his environment more than out of curiosity -still, she's choking on her own heart, her hands useless at her sides.

 

She'd like to hide from his sight the most innocent things, like her wooden chair, for some reason, that she suddenly finds very stupid looking, and the clothes she left on it.

She follows his eyes and she now feels like apologizing for the notebooks on her desk, as if that wasn't the exact spot they're supposed to be at, and if he notices how nervous she is he doesn't shy away from nor interrupt his scrutiny at any point, letting his eyes slowly go over everything with the same blank expression -and without a word.

 

He then looks at the wardrobe behind her, and she feels her whole back tense up, dying to turn around and look at it through his eyes, but not wanting to turn her back on him.

 

As a sort of compromise, she starts to quickly look around her, mentally cursing the few clothes on the ground, looking at the porcelaine of her bedside lamp that broke during the move, and that she glued together; then at a letter from Santa Claus that she taped to the wall from a time when her father didn't drink.

She winces briefly at the perspective of Solo getting close to it, reading it, asking questions about it, although he 's not the type.

Still she has to resist the very real urge to take it down. It'd only bring more attention to it in the process.

 

When her eyes are back on him though, he's not looking at her lamp.

Or her clothes, or the letter on the wall  -or the wardrobe.

 

He's looking down at the bed, standing on the other side of it.

His cheekbones colored with a faint flush, his lips parted.

Whatever blank expression he was pulling off so well a second before, it's gone now. The fluster is somewhat discreet, but impossible to miss.

 

It takes her just a second to find out what his eyes fell on.

 

For that whole second, she's blissfully and unexplicably unsuspecting.

 

Then her eyes follow his.

\--and fall on the jacket she stole from him.

 

Right there, with its blue and red colors -in her very bed.

 

_...fuck._

 

It's tangled with the sheets, half hidden by the blanket.

Still, it remains in plain sight for him to see, and given the look on his face, there's no doubt he's recognized it.

 

In that moment she has the instinct to step toward the bed and grab it, but she stops herself, and forces her arms at her sides.

She can't exactly try to hide it now.

 

So she just dumbly stands there, her knees suddenly very weak, her blood turning hot and flooding the skin of her neck and face.

 

She closes her eyes for an instant in the hope that it will help her think of something that would save appearances, but obviously that's a lost cause.

 

The silence between them, with the dusk so slowly fading in, somehow heightens her embarrassment, gives the situation such a simple, plain setting, that it makes the object of her awkwardness even clearer to the both of them, it seems.

 

When she opens her eyes back on him, he's looking at her.

Still full of hesitation, the evidence between them. Letting her no real possibility to back away now.

"...since when have you known?"

 

She's quite disoriented, having felt more in the span of three minutes than in a year, so she needs a few seconds to even register that he's asked her something.

 

"-known what?" she croaks faintly.

 

He swallows, barely able to speak high enough once more:

« ...that it was me-- »

 

Her voice is still a bit breathy when she speaks again, but she's less shaken:

"I don't know," she starts, clearing her throat. "...three weeks, I think."

 

Talking about it out loud, for the very first time, and with him no less, sends her heart back on a frenzy.

 

The contrast between how silent and calm her surroundings are and how loud her heart is makes her lose her mind.

She doesn't like the feeling.

There's nothing pleasant about a stage fright.

 

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asks then, voice still low.

 

It doesn't sound like an accusation exactly. Still she feels a sting, and she doesn't have the time the time to try and understand where it comes from or why.

 

She settles for whatever reaction comes, with no irritation in her tone, yet clearly defensive, close to stammering.

"--why didn't  _you_?  ...why did you leave me notes?"

 

Spilling everything out loud is more terrifying by the second, and despite having kept her tone in check and her need to know being genuine, it doesn't help that she's hurried the questions out, one after the other -her pained interest turning into a blame.

Just like that, his tone is cutting, jaw brought slightly forward, and he looks straight at her, all latent timidity vanished.

He points at the bed sharply:

"--- _why is my jacket in your bed?"_

 

She doesn't like being cornered anymore than he does.

"Why are you even here??"

 

"...isn't it because you think of me?" he probes again, as if to finish his first question, ignoring her own despite the hurt she sees flashing on his face.

 

She's shaking now, the bluntness of his question cutting the air, the room shrinking around her. 

She hates being asked that now that she can't lie anymore. 

 

All she can do is stutter. Pretty badly.

"...w—well... don't _you_?"

 

_"Don't I what?"_

 

Her throat tightens even more, and she has to force the words out --her strangled voice betraying how panicked and self-conscious she is to ask:

 

"...think of me?"

 

He stills. 

 

"Yes," he breathes.

"I do."

 

It's not an admission.

He says it like it's a common understanding between them already, like he's genuinely disconcerted that she's asked, that she didn't know the answer to that, or needed to hear it.

Like it's the most evident thing. 

 

Unaware of the blow he sent her way, adding with a murmur:

"Constantly."

 

They stand in silence, each on either sides of her single bed.

 

Resent comes back in his voice, although at the way he glances at her -barely- he doesn't own it at all :

"...all this time, I thought you hated me."

 

And he winces -because of what he said, of the memory of what he's mentioning, or because of the fact that he's said it  _to her_ , she can't know which one it is.

 

All she knows is that she's spent endless days herself wondering why Ben Solo hated her.

If he expects sympathy, he won't have any.

 

" _So?_ " she shoots back.

Finding her voice again. Fists clenched at her sides.

 

When he looks up at her though, the brief flutter in his stare renders impossible for her to hold his gaze.

When has it become so hard to raise her voice at him?

 

She can't be sure, then, if his hand is going for the jacket, uncertain as it is -it doesn't matter: the warning is out before she can think.

 

_"Don't-you-dare."_

 

He stops, taken aback.

 

She quickly takes the jacket with her, rolls it and places it on the stool she uses as a nightstand, away from his grasp.

 

Now, his frown meets her own.

 

"Should I give you the matching pants, too?" He asks flatly, before casting his eyes back down, bitter.

 

The silence that follows lasts probably no more than half a minute. Naturally, it doesn't feel that way.

She squirms, chest heavy.

 

She's about to talk, but freezes when she sees him going around the bed, her heart hammering with a renewed urgency.

His eyes aren't on her though.

 

With a few steps, he's at the wardrobe, stopping just an instant in front of it, hesitating, his jaw set -and not looking back at her.

"Wh—what are you doing?"

 

He parts the hangers with one irritated motion of his hand.

 

« I'm taking something, » he simply informs her.

 

She just stares at him eyes wide, unable to find anything to say to that, taking one shaky step toward him with a weak "wh--don't--"

 

His hand pulls on a black t-shirt he obviously chooses randomly.

 

"--no, it's,--–it's my favorite," she protests unconvincingly.

 

"I don't care."

 

He looks at the t-shirt, jaw working, clearly unsatisfied, before quickly opening one of the two drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe.

 

Exposing her socks, the three bras she owns, and her panties.

 

She clearly revolts then, embarrassment making its way back in her chest.

"Don't!"

 

She's next to him in a second, just in time to see a flush on the pale skin of his face, one that must match her own --but her attempt at closing the drawer prompts him to snatch a pair of black cotton panties right before she does.

 

_"No!"_

 

She grabs the sleeve of his sweatshirt as he shoves it in his pocket, taking two steps away from her, not exactly resolute, just looking like he's trying to make a point without really knowing what about.

 

She doesn't tug too hard on his wrist to get his hand back out of his pocket, seeing as he doesn't resist too much, but she still feels the need to insist:

"...no, don't."

 

Once out, she has to force open his hand to take the underwear back. He reluctanctly lets her do, jaw tense, watching her.

She tries not to pay attention to how hard her heart is beating.

 

The second she takes it back from him, stepping away to put it back in the drawer, Solo throws the t-shirt on the floor.

 

He shoves his hands in his pockets, head down, eyes to the floor, still working his jaw, his mouth in a frown.

 

For the first time since he's come up, she realizes how uneven his breathing is.

 

He looks properly dejected.

Wounded.

 

She just looks at him while he's not looking back, a few feet away on his right.

 

When she very slowly, very awkwardly hands him a pair of shorts, bringing it in his line of vision as he keeps his head down, a flicker of surprise flashes on his face, but he appears to be soothed by that gesture to a small extent only. 

The frustration is still there; whatever he does want, that's not it, and he gingerly takes it without looking up at her, exhaling through his nose, clenching his fingers on it, looking down at it, unresolved.

 

Until the crease between his brows gradually fades away, and his eyes widens just enough to indicate that the realization dawns on him.

 

He turns his head and the second his eyes are back on her, she tries her best not to move at all, arms at her side, legs weak.

 

Resisting the impulse to pull down on the hem of her tank top...

 

...and hide from his sight the white cotton of the panties she's wearing.

 

 

Not that his eyes linger. Not at all.

 

 

As soon as he sees her and gets the confirmation he needs, he quickly turns his head away. Face as red as can be.

 

She sees his throat works, and his fist clench hard on her shorts.

 

 

He's not frustrated anymore.

He just looks really embarrassed.

"What are you doing?"

 

...she doesn't know what reaction she was going for; she doesn't know what she was thinking.

 

"Nothing," she murmurs dumbly, while vainly bringing her arms across her chest and hips.

"...sorry," she breathes again.

 

He doesn't react, just stares at the floor, cheeks flushed.

 

 

The rejection stings  _badly --_ she had no idea it could hurt that much.

She's a complete idiot. She's acted without thinking, and now she has to go through the mortifying experience taking her shorts back.

 

From Solo.

 

 

_From Solo._

 

She extends her hand toward the shorts, gently tugging on it for him to let go, so she can put them back on.

 

 

Except that, while still not looking at her, when she does tug on it,  _he doesn't let go_.

 

In fact, his fist closes on it more.

 

But she's way too overwhelmed by the shame she feels to take it for what it is, or even register that it's happening in the first place, so she blindly insists and pulls on it some more.

 

When his other hand softly wraps around her wrist, to keep her from pulling again, her brain finally stutter.

 

"Those are mine," she hears then. He swallows thickly.

"...you can't just  _take them back_ ," he adds, low, almost gritting his teeth.

 

She's not really listening.

 

All her attention has narrowed down to the pads of his fingers on the inside of her wrist and the palm around it.

 

He's incredibly warm.

 

She didn't know it was even possible for anyone to have hands that warm.

 

She looks up at him.

 

His eyes are fixed on her wrist, his lips pressed tight.

 

 

"-- _what_ ," she huffs.

 

The word just falls from her mouth with no purpose at all -it's simply all the reaction she can produce to what's happening.

 

 

Without any warning, he bends.

 

 

And smacks his mouth on hers. 

 

 

The strength put in the contact is close to a punitive kind ---any harder would have hurt. 

 

As if to mean:  _you'll take it, and that's final_.

 

Her ribs refuse to let any air out. 

 

He straightens back up, lets out a shaky breath, his head turned on the side a bit, not even daring to look at the effect he's had - and letting go of her wrist. 

 

Meanwhile, she does her best trying to process it, stunned, her eyes wide on his mouth.

 

She can't believe she had them there, those lips. 

 

Gone is her second-guessing. 

 

_The touch was way too brief._

 

 

She very cautiously shifts closer.

As if Solo was some sort of fawn she could frighten by moving too abruptely.

 

She strains her chin up to him, then stills.

 

Waiting for lightning to strike twice.

 

He doesn't move.  

 

If she waits any longer she's going to believe she's imagined it, and now fear makes her feel like the matter is  _urgent_.

 

But he's too tall, she can't reciprocate without help.

 

 

She reaches for the collar of his sweatshirt with unsteady hands--

 

...then  _tugs_ , like a child on her mother's skirt.

 

On the balls of her feet, she lets out a faint, irritated huff when he doesn't bend, his cheeks flushing again.

 

 

"... _Solo_ ," she whines softly, mid-way between a warning and a plea.

 

He's not trying to be proud, she sees it at the way he looks at her then.

 

 

...when he bends back down, approaching his mouth ever so slowly, she can feel him shake slightly, but his sigh, his half-shut eyes on her parted mouth, are one of a person appeased that things are back to their natural order.

 

Like his mouth belongs there. 

Like he doesn't have a choice in the matter, like he can't deny her what's rightfully hers.

 

He meets her with the most delicate touch of his lips on her own, testing the waters -his breath hot on her cheek.

 

She hums a furtive  _mmh_  against his mouth.

Her shoulders loosening.

 

When he parts briefly, he doesn't straighten back up.

 

He wouldn't be able to, she's not letting go of his colllar this time, fists clenched, keeping him close.

 

 

 

The shorts fall on the floor with a soft sound.

 

He presses his lips -once, twice, with tactful, cautious mouvements of his mouth--

\--letting her drink in the small wet sounds he does--

\--essentially  _nursing her_. 

 

She lets him do, her eyes barely opened on his pink cheekbones and heavy eyelids, her neck completely craned, straining toward him-

 

...like an actual nestling patiently taking it all in until it's full and satisfied. 

 

She circles his waist, pulling his whole body flushed against hers, carefully, as to not have him interrupt his care.

 

His own neck is completely bent down to accomodate their closeness then.

 

His hands come up to the back of her head, holding her still, proceeding with his ministration, scrupulous achieving his task --anxious to give her mouth the attention it needs. 

 

He parts at some point, more than necessary, apparently, because she can't keep in a small, automatic, protesting  _no!_ , barely breathed on his mouth from the lack of air in her lungs. 

 

Just as she says it he bows his head back down with a languid caress of his tongue on her lower lip, ending it with a round, wet peck at the corner of her mouth.

 

The next stroke of his tongue has her opening to him with a sigh. He hums gratefully. Melting against her. 

 

She sighs, her knees weak, her arms locking him in place. Their beathing getting heavier by the second. 

 

And he doesn't show any signs of stopping anytime soon. 

 

 

...so when she's the one who steps away abruptely, he stares at her with wide eyes -puffy lips parted, and breath short.

 

Downright shocked, and at a loss. 

 

 

It gets worse when she tells him rather bluntly: 

"I'm  _tired_. I don't feel well, I need to go to bed."

 

Without the smallest hesitation. 

 

Turning away from him, and walking straight to her bed, lying down on her side, then not moving at all --without further explanations.

 

She's her back to him, and at first she doesn't hear anything, not even his breathing, as if he was holding it.

 

But eventually, she hears his steps on the wooden floor.

 

He goes around the bed, and soon he's in her sight again, walking in direction of the door. 

 

 

Resigned.

 

 

She speaks the second his hands grabs the door handle, stopping him effectively:

"Where are you going?"

 

He looks down at her. 

His mouth opens, but no word comes out.

 

"Where are you going?" she murmurs again. 

 

 

 

He blinks-- then clears his throat. 

 

 

"...nowhere."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [In my life there's been heartache and pain/ I don't know if I can face it again/ Can't stop now, I've traveled so far/ To change this lonely life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jA-_g_iSY0)
> 
> .....sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry......


	16. Open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason I couldn't get the link of the post directly from her blog, but a gentle soul - Littlebirdsoars - made [a fanart for chapter 15](https://plantsandlamps.tumblr.com/post/179570102492/a-doodle-for-plantsandlamps-who-is-not-feeling). I absolutely love it.
> 
> Thank you so, so much.

The bed is very small.

 

It's a single bed, but Rey has got to wonder if its proportions are standard.

Even while lying on her side, she's very close to Solo when he lies on his back next to her, almost touching him.

 

One thing that certainly makes her perceive her bed for even smaller than it is, is how Solo, slender-looking Solo, makes the mattress sag under his weight when he sits on the edge to take off his shoes, causing her to balance herself so as to not fall on her belly toward him--

-or how his head touches the headboard once he lies down, while his feet reach the end of the mattress.

 

His head's a bit higher than hers.

She'd like to prop herself up on her elbow and kiss him again.

 

Instead she reaches for the clasp of her bra under her tank top.

Eyes fixed on the gray fabric of his sweatshirt in front of her -meaning his shoulder.

 

Lying on her side is surely the most impractical position for her to be doing that, but for some reason, she doesn't feel herself able to sit up and do it ostensibly, right in front of him. 

So, despite being there right next to him, she contorts herself and squirms discreetly, moving the minimum necessary, unclasps her bra, then gingerly brings her hands back in of her and slides the fine straps one after the other along her arms -without taking her tank top off.

 

Just as she slides the first one, she hears Solo say with a flat tone :

"I see you, you know."

 

Whether because he's so close, or because he's talking at all after so much silence, her heart jumps a bit at how deep his voice suddenly sounds.

"Congrats on your functional vision," she mutters.

 

She doesn't look up, so she can't tell what his reaction is to that, beside not moving at all his hands on his belly.

She drops the bra on the floor behind her.

 

Then just like him, she doesn't move at all.

 

For some time. But time doesn't make any sense anymore.

She has no idea if ten minutes or thirty seconds have passed when she moves again.

 

The distortion of time must have to do what she plans on doing next, and the courage she has to gather to do it -along with the simple fact that  _Solo_  is  _lying on her fucking bed._

 

She still hasn't looked up at him once, and won't, when she strains her neck up a bit, clenching her abs, and,

in the most gingerly way possible, very slowly approaches her mouth and nose to his shoulder, then guides them lower.

 

To his armpit.

 

Before she can change her mind, she sniffs the scent there.

Filling her lungs the most gradually possible and to the fullest she can, without making any noise.

 

In the way she would if she didn't want to wake up Solo.

 

Except Solo is everything but asleep.

 

With her face so close to his chest, she feels his voice vibrates through her, even with how low he speaks, full of disbelief.

She doesn't even want to imagine the expression he must be having.

 

"...you're fucking weird."

 

She lets the weight of her head bury her face in the crook of his armpit a bit, then retorts to hide her embarrassment, for good measure -her voice muffled by his sweatshirt:

 

"You reek."

 

Assuming either of them speaks truthfully about their opinions of one another, it remains to be determined if her being weird and him reeking are considered by either party as bad things.

 

She focuses on the smell. Same cheap deodorant, but the smell is fresh there, and her breath against the fabric warms the tip of her nose up.

 

She risks a glance at him.

 

His chin tucked in, head tilted on the side, he's looking down at her, frowning. He swallows when her eyes meet his.

 

Then he looks down at his chest.

 

More accurately, at her hand there.

 

She takes her time slowly drawing round, large circles over the expanse of his chest, feeling it rise and fall peacefully under her light touch.

 

If he thinks she's weird now, he's certainly keeping it shut.

Watching her hand caress him through the sweatshirt without a protest, like a well-taught boy.

 

She won't complain either.

 

Her head is resting on his arm, a position that can't be comfortable for either of them but she can't really give it any importance when her attention is monopolized by how Solo feels under her hand.

 

It's firm. It's really firm.

 

Wide too.

 

And it's rising and falling a bit more off beat each time.

 

She ends up circling her entire arm around his waist -as if she was a hunter and she had to keep him down.

Solo shows no sign of struggle.

 

Wordlessly, she tentatively wraps a leg around his thighs. 

Then folds her knee higher, at his waist.

 

His fists clench on the blanket under him on each sides of his waist.

 

She ungracefully hoists herself on him, although still with as much discretion as she can muster, despite her being discreet making no difference whatsoever.

 

Still glancing warily at him.

The way children check their parents when they know they're in trouble.

 

As if to illustrate her thoughts, Solo intervenes again.

 

"What are you doing?"

 

He can clearly see what she's doing. She can clearly see that he's not stopping her. Whatever he's trying to make up for with that question, he can't hide how tense he's become, and not in a bad way, if his darkening eyes and undivided attention to her movements are any indications.

 

"...nothing," she replies with a straight face, as she slides the tips of her fingers under the hem of his sweatshirt now, at his waist, feeling his stomach clench at the contact.

She slowly pushes up the fabric, uncovering his abdomen, only stopping right under his armpits.

 

She's thinking so loudly about how firm his waist, his torso are, and warm and large too, solid under her as she lets herself rest on him progressively -her belly against his own, her chest pressed down on his- that she's scared she'll end up speaking her thoughts out loud without realizing it.

 

Busy avoiding his stare and grazing her nose along his skin, she's not quite owning it but still unable to help it.

It seems that her hands let go the sweatshirt and start their flat caresses of his chest again on their own volition, and she hums, lips pressed against his sternum.

 

...she hums just from the statisfaction of  _running her hands there_.

 

When she looks up, her face quite close to his now, he's looking at the ceiling this time.

His cheekbones have turned into a pretty shade of pink again.

 

As she settles more comfortably on him, shifting and squirming a bit to straddle him better, on her belly, her pelvis geting in contact better with his own, and his hips unvolontarily tilting up, she feels him.

 

Getting harder by the second. 

 

He actually clears his throat, still not looking at her.

 

Unsure of her power, she tentatively rolls her hips, causing a sweet heat to lick up her belly, as she sees him close his eyes, his lips tightening,

 

But then, just as she least expects it, given how much of a good boy he's been, his eyes lazily open back on her.

 

\---and both his hands come to rest on her ass.

 

She lifts her head up and releases a small  _'oh'_  that makes his lips twitch.

 

She swallows thickly and her hands find his sweatshirt again and hold on to it, as if that touch that Solo is giving her could have her falling out of bed.

 

He caresses her ass with a flat hand, taking his time, the tips of his fingers drifting under the hem of her panties at times.

 

"--wh-" she tries, cutting herself short with a strangled noise, her eyelids fluttering, her back arching to seek a touch that Solo seems to deliberately make sure it remains feather-like.

 

"...what?" he asks flatly, looking intently at her.

 

"-- _mmh!_ " she counters very eloquently.

 

His strokes get slightly firmer, squeezing lightly at times.

 

She falters, and he's here to see it. 

 

"Do you like my hands there?" He asks quietly. She's not sure she's imagining the hint of smugness in his voice.

 

Half shut eyes looking up at him, she rolls her hips again, almost instinctively, really needing a friction  _there_ , not meaning it to be a provocative response to his question.

 

But Solo hisses, and he must perceive that as a retaliation, because he abruptely sits up, letting her fall on her back in front of him. 

 

She blinks, her head at the foot end of the bed, and he shifts to sit on his heels between her legs, palming himself through his shorts, vaguely rearranging his cock there. 

Must be getting uncomfortable. 

  
Her attention is entirely on the bulge there, probably a bit for a beat too long because her breathing gets much more heavier, and it's also plenty of time for him to catch her gaze.

 

When her eyes are back on his face, he makes a show in turn of really giving himself the time to appreciate the view, his eyes slowing on her chest, reminding her of how see-through a white tank top can be, and prompting her to sheepishly bring up a small hand that helps by no means, but his eyes are already going south when she does.

 

That's what it takes for her to realize just how much she's wet, the fabric clinging to her--

 

She folds a leg up and brings it across her hips to hide, not with an actual thought out plan to effectively and durably hide, but as an instinctive attempt ---that he dismisses without even trying to touch her.

 

"No, open."

 

She closes her eyes.

 

That's worse than if she'd just let him have an eyefull from the get go.

 

Her hands clenches on the blanket under her.

 

He's not moving at all, eyes on her thigh. 

 

"Jones...  _Open."_

 

She represses a whimper.

The sooner the better, if her growing embarrassment tells her anything.

 

She opens her eyes back, her leg shaking as she spreads her thighs back to his sight. Seeing him stare at it, more serious than ever, pupils blown.

 

One of his hand comes to rest on her hip, the other drags a shy thumb right above what must be a stain a shade darker than the rest of the white fabric of her panties. 

 

Far away enough from the spot she needs him the most, to have her lifts up her hips at him. 

 

As a result, he removes his hand.

 

That's all it takes for her to purse her lips and huff through her nose before she can catch herself.

 

Nothing transpires on his face, still she can  _feel_  how self-satisfied he is of that reaction.

 

He confirms that impression the next second.

"Everything okay?" He asks, with an innocent tone that's everything but genuine.

 

She thankfully isn't given enough time to ruminate, as he lets himself down between her thighs, not completely, but his weight keeps her legs open now, and his face is really close to hers -his breath hot on her temple, and less even that she thought it was.

 

His hand rests chastely on her waist.

 

"You don't even like me," he states, a bit breathless, which is surely meant as a fact as much as a prompt for her to contradict him, but in that moment, she's too distracted, because now it's her turn to have her chin in and eyes down, following his hand as it creeps up and up while he puts a feather-like kiss on her cheek, asking her:

 

"Why do you let me do this then?"

 

...effectively splitting her attention between the feel of his gentle, round caresses on her chest, his hand gently pressing her tits at times through her tank top, and what he's telling her, his words a confusing middle-ground between a low, sly talk and genuine insecurity, between bitterness and actual wonder.

 

She lets out a strangled noise only now realizing her hand is fisting his collar with white knuckles, keeping him close, his face right next to hers, his mouth grazing her cheekbone, feeling her heart beat hard against his hand.

 

"Why do you let me do this," he breathes again absentmindedly, very distracted himself by the handful he takes once he finally slides his hand under the thin fabric of her tank top, squeezing with much less reservation now, having her arch her back to him.

 

But his hand slides back down over her ribs, then her waist, then her lower belly--

 

The pads of three fingers draw a slow circle between over her panties between her legs with an intentional shy pressure, massaging it diligently, Solo's eyes fixed on her face with an expression that'd let anyone believe he's not aware how much of a tease he's being.

 

Anyone but Rey. It's not enough.

She archs her back, panting softly, then tilts her hips to push into his touch. 

He withdraws his hand just so,  _right there_  -just out of reach.

 

Her face burns and morphs into a scowl. She can't look at him. Her hand tightens at his collar, and when he resumes, she keeps from moving at all.

 

The small mewls she traps in the back of her throat, her lips kept closed, are more than enough to stroke his ego anyway. 

Meanwhile he presses what she's sure are only meant to be affectionate wet pecks on her mouth, that she still takes with a mild grudge in between self-conscious pants, as if he was kissing her to taunt her even more.

 

It terrifies her how easy it was for him to have her breathing that heavy, to have her flushed and squirming, to make the leg that isn't trapped under his weight twitch nervously at his hip.

 

She won't let that go unpunished.

 

Both her hands are on the waistband of his shorts without warning.

 

His hands stills for a second, then grabs one of her wrist. 

 

"Wait, wait," he begs, breath short, when she goes to slip her other hand past the waistband, lifting his hips up and away from hers.

"--wait, Jones, I don't ---I don't... have any condoms--"

 

He lets his forehead rest on the mattress, not letting go of her wrist. "I don't have anything."

 

 _...that_  certainly shakes her out of whatever power play was going on, or whatever appearances she wanted to keep.

 

She blinks, sobered up, and immediately pleads, one hand pulling him down gently, the other one drifting lower:

"...pull out? ...Pull out?" She croaks, unable to use words anymore, it seems. 

 

He closes his eyes and grunts when she palms the length of his cock through the fabric:

"...you can pull out... you—you can pull out," she repeats in a whisper, again and again, feeling him good, in a greedy way --far from the subtlety Solo has more or less displayed.

 

He tears himself from her grasp and sits up, chest visibly rising and falling.

 

Right then it crosses her mind that he could  _actually choose to leave_ , he could be about to get up and  _leave_.

Panic courses through her, and she's about to stutter that,  _it's fine_ , they can just  _squirm_  against one another, or lie down very still,  _she doesn't care -_ but she doesn't want to watch him go  _please don't go_ \---

 

All thoughts come to an halt at once when she feels him pulls on her panties then roll them along her legs.

She presses her thighs together.

 

Whatever trace of smugness she could decel in him, it's completely gone now. He looks at her with what strongly looks like reverance.

 

He stands up, causing the mattress to lift.

Then proceeds to takes off his sweatshirt, then the t-shirt underneath.

 

She sits up, eyes round, and hurries to take off her tank top herself, letting it drop on the floor.

 

She's free then to watch him pull down his shorts and boxer briefs in one go.

 

She's barely able to push out a stunned and faint  _uh_  out of her lungs at the whole sight of him.

 

His clothes that are two sizes too big hide him well, and she can appreciate for the first time how broad and toned he really is.

It only serves to leave a stronger impression on her now that she's sitting, while he's standing there for her to see everything.

 

Including what he kept away in his shorts. She swallows.

 

When he takes a step toward her, she's looking up at him, feeling smothered by the heat on her face.

 

"...you're beautiful--" she breathes very quietly before she can stop herself.

 

She just has the time to see him lower his gaze before his hand comes up on her eyes to block her view.

She frowns, her mouth opening soundlessly, just before she feels his full lips press an open kiss on it, his hands pushing her back down.

Once on her back he settles between her thighs, his cock hot against her, and she's shameful to sigh at the contact, rolling her hips already.

 

His fingers find their way back under her belly and start stroking lightly again, while his eyes go from her face to her tits, too captivated apparently to pay attention to the quiet sounds she huffs on his cheek or neck.

 

He pushes one finger inside more slowly than ever, her cunt embarrassingly inviting.

Still, she's not used to fingers that big being there, or to have that one source of relief being irritatingly drawn-out like that, and she digs her nails in his chest briefly.

 

He tenses, making her realize what she's doing when she's doing it and mutter an embarrassed  _sorry_  that he rewards with a lazy, breathy kiss -and another finger.

 

She sticks out her tongue without meaning to, there, just past her lips.

 

She crosses her ankles behind his thighs, trapping him with her legs, letting out short, squeaking sounds in his mouth as he draws his fingers in and out ever so slowly ---too slow,  _too slow_.

 

She circles his waist with her arms and bucks her hips against his hand, without a satisfying result, and just as she's about to whimper, his thumb mercifully draws a circle on her clit.

 

Her back takes off the mattress with a cry that she hastily cuts off by biting down on her lip.

 

He thrusts into her gently, his thumb lazily and unprecisely rubbing her clit at times, making her shut her eyes hard and pants.

 

"Did you keep them?" He asks against her cheek -but she's not listening. Not at all.

 

"Jones," he tries again, breathless, and she mutters a non-committal  _uh_ while her eyes are still shut and she's rolling her hips again and again--

 

-so he removes his hand.

"Jones."

 

Her eyes open right away: "--what?" she huffs, immediately remeding to the situation by pulling him down right to her and attempting to grind against his cock.

 

He opens his mouth to speak but produces a strangled noise instead, unable to not follow her rhythm with his hips.

 

"--did you keep them?" he tries again.

 

"What?" She repeats, in a haze.

 

He hides in the crook of her neck. "...the notes."

 

"What notes?" She asks dryly.

 

It earns her a sound between a growl and a snort, and his face comes back into view for her to see him narrow his eyes at her as he presses his whole weight down on her, making her squeak while he repeats under his breath:

"... _what notes_..."

 

She shuts her eyes again, too happy about the proper attention she's getting as he rubs himself along her.

She breathes hard, and his next words are about a murmur, but she's still able to catch it.

 

"...why do you even like me?"

 

...said so low that he seems to be hoping she won't hear it after all.

 

Her eyes open wide and blink.

 

She doesn't have the time to react, though, because he presses the head of his cock into her the next moment, and she arches her back again, mouth open, eyes shut.

 

In spite of the size difference, he's able to slowly and steadily slides in half-way with a grunt, before he stops.

 

He lets her stretch around him, patiently, although clearly moved by the sensation, his breathing hitching.

 

When she claws at the small of his back he takes that as a sign to gently thrust a few times.

 

He's fully seated a moment later. He stills, catching his breath.

 

She's not a patient one, though, is she?

 

"Move," she pleads with a crease of her brows, inclining her hips back and forth fruitlessly. "--move, move,  _please_ \--"

 

He braces himself a bit higher on his elbows, and looks at her squirms, self-satisfied.

 

She doesn't even care anymore.

 

" _Solo_ ," she whines with a kick of her foot on the bed.

 

He's not cruel, so he starts to thrust gently, rocking her with slight bounces of the mattress -and  _of her tits_ , which he can't seem to stop studying, his pink tongue just behind his teeth, his hair falling in his eyes.

 

He bends down to give one a broad lick on one of the soft pads, then catches the rosy center between his lips as he inhales deeply, releasing it with a wet pop, humming.

 

But ultimately, for some reason, what makes her eyes roll back is the reflection she sees in the mirror fixed on the inside of the wardrobe.

 

From where she is, head at the end of the bed, she has a view from the side of their thighs down to their feet.

 

...the thighs and the calves of a runner, and her toned legs wrapped around them, her bare toes curling, his feet twice the size of hers with his white socks still on, pushing against the pillows...

 

He rests his full lips on her cheek, not exactly pressed, just opened, panting on her.

 

"--you're so... you're so--" she tries, half-deliriously, cut off by his thrusts, ending it in a whisper for lack of air:

"—you're so warm-"

 

She swallows back a moan, and murmurs again " _you're so warm_ ", pulling him closer to her.

 

His hips stutter before he lets himself weighing down on her pelvis, flushed against her---and slowly  _grinds, rolls, crushes_  her down.

 

Caging her.

 

She hiccups.

 

Soon, the pitch of the small squeaks she doesn't manage to hold back gets higher, and he seems to distractedly notice, pushing her further down in the mattress with circles of his hips.

 

She gasps for air in between the waves rushing one after the other at her core.

 

Until one of them drowns her.

 

...tension and relief all at once makes her still and cry under Solo.

 

Sounds comes back to her gradually. Solo's hand is on her mouth.

 

She blinks dumbly.

 

She then finally understands what he's frantically muttering to her, his forehead down on the mattress next to her head.

His eyes shut hard.

 

"... _don't move, Jones, don't move, don't"_  -he swallows-"...don't move, don't breathe, don't do anything."

 

As if she didn't understand english anymore, drunk, her hand starts a soft caress from his neck to his chest--

 

 _"DON'T,"_  he barks, startling her.

 

Seconds stretch between them in complete silence.

His hand's still on her mouth.

 

Finally, he pulls out,  _cautiously_ , with a ragged breath and a quiet  _fuck_.

 

He avoids her eyes, sheepish now, and parts a bit from her, allowing her to catch sight of his cock, hard as ever.

 

She takes him in her hand without hesitation, making him choke, and presses, strokes, gently, her eyes finding his as he pants, hard, and lets himself back down.

 

Pretty soon she's pumping him in a not-so-gentle way anymore, his large form trembling and shaking above her, jerking in her hand.

 

He finishes on her belly with a drawn-out, undignified growl, lips swollen and cheeks pink, her hand diligently milking all he has to give.

 

When he breathes out a deep sigh she lets go, and he rolls off her onto his back. His legs dangle from the edge of the bed.

 

She spreads her fingers, watching the cum there and rubbing it in her hand -before she forces herself up, and walks out of the bedroom on unsteadily legs and with sleepy eyes.

 

 

The cold air in the hallway hits her and reminds her that she's naked, but she still goes to the bathroom.

 

Drowsy, she turns the faucet on and waits for the water to be hot, her eyelids heavy. She takes her blue washclothe and passes it under the stream.

 

With a slack jaw, she sotfly wipes the semen off her belly, sighing happily at how warm the washclothe is.

She rinces it, wrings it one or two times under the water.

 

When she turns the faucet off, she hears the wooden floor creak in the hallway.

She turns her head toward the door.

 

But when Solo doesn't open it, she frowns. 

 

 

...and when she hears the stairs creak, she pads to the door.

 

 

Out in the hallway, she stops at the top of the stairs.

 

 

He hears her, stops and turns, looking up at her.

 

 

Fully dressed, with his sweatshirt in his hand.

 

 

Her eyes widen.

 

She's fully awake now.

 

\---still, it's like waking up from a forty five minutes nap; she doesn't know where she is, and she doesn't know how words work anymore.

 

"Wha—wh—where, where are –--- _what are you doing?_   Why---"

Her throat is too tight to go on, and she chokes, feeling her eyes burn.

 

He blinks, his eyes opening wide too.

 

"I'm... I'm going home," he breathes, stuttering, utterly confused.

 

She doesn't anticipate how pitiful she sounds next :

" ...you are?" She asks, her vision getting blurry.

 

"I, I..." he stutters again.

 

The sweatshirt falls on the floor.

 

A second later, he's at the top of the stairs.

 

The first tears spill right before one of his arm wraps around her waist and lifts her up promptly, her legs tense under her and reaching awkwardly for the ground as he rapidly carry her back to the bedroom --not quite with the urgency of a parent carrying their child to the emergency room, but almost.

 

He drops her on the bed, and she lands ungracefully with a stunned  _ugh_ before she sits up, sniffling, blinking up at him.

 

Watching him as he swiflty takes off his t-shirt --then his shorts and boxer briefs.

 

He pulls on the blanket under her, and she shifts to let him, before he lies down, pulling her down with him, and bringing the blanket over both of their heads.

 

She can't speak with how tight he's holding her then, crushing her in his arms.

 

"Sorry," he murmurs against her temple, "I'm sorry." 

He swallows.

 

"I wanted to stay, but I thought you wanted me gone."

 

He gets a wet strangled "-- _no"_  in response, muffled in the crook of his neck.

 

 

"--sorry..." she hears again after a few moments.

 

When her breathing calms down, she presses a timid peck on the side of his neck.

 

 

He tightens his hold some more.

 

 

Her eyes flutter shut.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Lovers they may cause you tears / Go ahead, release your fears / Stand up and be counted / Don't be ashamed to cry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpcAmQ_TvpE)


	17. A well-trained dog

The first time Ben meets Mrs Miller, she opens the door with puffy eyes.

 

The Millers moved into the neighborhood three years before, and Ben has only ever seen the husband, a grey-haired asshole who wears suits.

He doesn't expect Mrs Miller to be so young. With three inch high-heels, she's as tall as him. She too has dark hair, that she lets untied most of the time.

She's been crying and she looks very sorry that he has to see her like this.

 

She lets him come in when he tells her he's Benjamin, Leia's son, but that doesn't ring a bell, so he simply explains to her that they need the lawn mower back.

The one her husband borrowed two months earlier.

Bitter, she tells him she's not sure where that  _shit_  is, because her husband  _doesn't live here anymore_ , and that he left everything as it is.

 

Then, she asks if he wants some orange juice. He shakes his head.

 

Next thing he knows, the kitchen counter digs in the small of his back, his hands gripping it with white knuckles.

 

He's gritting his teeth hard and pants through them, looking down at Mrs Miller's hand as she pumps his cock faster and faster still, then looking up at her face, so close to his, while trying to pay attention to what she's cooing at him.

He comes in her hand ridiculously fast. She doesn't seem fazed by that.

 

Still he notices she can't meet his eyes when she hands him a paper towel. " _Here_ , clean yourself."

 

She washes her hands, then tells him, her back to him: "My husband could be back any minute, you have to go."

 

He blinks, still in the haze of his orgasm.  "I thought he left--"

 

"He didn't  _leave_ ," she corrects, irritated, "...it was mutual.  _It's still his house_."

 

He doesn't move for a few seconds, then nods dumbly, even though she can't see him.

He pulls up his shorts, and starts to walk with weak legs toward the front door.

 

"Benjamin!"

 

He turns to her.

"Yes?"

 

She's still his back to him.

 

"...check the backyard for the lawn mower."

 

But he doesn't. Instead, he walks straight to the front door.

 

When he's back home, he lets Leia know he couldn't find the lawn mower.

 

"What took you so long?" is what she asks in return.

 

He doesn't answer.

He just runs up the stairs.

 

 

The second time, two weeks later, they meet at the supermarket, the small one near the school.

 

He's running a few errands for Leia.

Mrs Miller looks really embarrassed, and apologetic, although he doesn't know about what exactly, and she doesn't apologize. If she's sorry, it might be for her or for him, maybe both.

 

She can look at him in the eyes, though. She tells him that she can give him a lift home, if he wants.

 

Fifteen minutes later, he's in her bed, she's on top of him -and he's trying really hard not to come too soon.

 

This time, he has to leave for an actual reason.

Leia isn't home often, but she is, that day, and she's waiting for her groceries.

 

That's what he tells Mrs Miller when he puts his socks back on in a haste, after he removed the condom from his cock.

"I'm sorry... my Mom is waiting for--"

 

She cuts him off : « Don't talk to me about your mother. Please. »

 

She leaves the room without another word.

 

Downstairs, when he tells her he's going, she's busy searching something in her kitchen.

 

She nods without looking at him.

 

From that day on, their meetings are everything but coincidences.

 

And the first times when she comes under him, on his mouth or his fingers, and that she leaves for the bathroom, he's still a bit  _confused_.

 

It takes her several attempts to make him understand how things are done.

 

"--oh... you're-- here?" She asks when she comes back in the living room, looking down at him on the couch.

 

"Uh... yeah," he replies, embarrassed.

He sits up wondering just where she expected him to be.

 

"...don't fall asleep on the couch--" she mutters, walking around  _moving things_. She's trying to hide how annoyed she is, and to speak normally -failing.

 

He swallows.

"...do you want me to go?"

 

"Well aren't your parents gonna worry?" she retorts. Deflecting.

 

 _No_ , he wants to say, _they won't._

But he doesn't say that. Because he can take a hint.

 

That happens a few times.

 

Soon, she doesn't need to say anything. The moment she goes to the bathroom is the moment he dresses up, and he's out the door a minute later.

 

Like a well-trained dog.

 

One afternoon, though, because she doesn't get up right away but instead kisses him, he has the naivety to believe they could do something else than fucking.

 

"Do you want to... watch a movie, or..."

 

She rolls on her back and snorts at the ceiling.

 

"I'm sure we must have the same taste."

 

He doesn't know what to say to that. So he just glances at her but she doesn't look back.

 

Still, he makes another attempt, since he's stupid.

 

"... what kind of movies do you like?"

 

She almost cuts him off.

 

"I don't watch movies."

 

He falls silent.

 

 

Whatever's going on in his stomach everytime he's with her and he cums, a knot systematically forming there, right after his release, whatever that is, he pushes it down.

 

Whatever it is he's lacking, whatever makes him not good enough, he uses it to fuel his stamina.

Trying to be creative with her. Endurant. A quick study. Whatever will make her have him back at her house.

 

She pretends like he's not a seventeen year-old, and he pretends like she's not thinking about her husband.

 

One day, she realizes that she doesn't have any condoms left, and he insists they have sex anyway.

 

She's reluctant, but she's also aware that he was a virgin before her, and that he doesn't have anyone else, so she accepts. All he has to do is pull out in time.

 

He doesn't pull out in time.

 

When she pushes him off her, she blinks at the come leaking out of her, touching it with the tips of her fingers as if she can't believe it.

 

The blow sent square to the side of his face is so blunt, that it reminds him of the few times his father hit him.

 

His left ear rings for several long seconds, and he bends in half on the couch, soundlessly, his hand pressed hard where it hurts.

 

Silence.

 

He doesn't look at her.

 

When he reaches for his sneakers, trembling from the shock, she breathes a  _sorry_.

 

"I shouldn't have hit you," she says again.

 

He looks at her then, his face burning.

 

She's still on her back, eyes to the ceiling, fists clenched. Clearly not appeased.

 

"What if I got pregnant?" She finally asks him, turning to look at him. "...you're the one who would provide for the kid? Hhm?  ...Are you ready to be a father, Benjamin?"

 

He knows she's not exactly trying to put the entire blame on his shoulders, just trying to scare him.

 

Mrs Miller would get an abortion without an ounce of hesitation -which is good.

 

Still, it works. It does scare him.

 

He dresses up without a word. Just as he's about to leave he hears her sit up on the couch.

"Wait."

 

He turns to her.

 

She stands up and tilts his chin to the side with her thumb, examining his cheek.

 

Seeing how it burns, he's sure to have red marks there. "Don't move," she murmurs, before walking away to the kitchen.

 

He doesn't move. He just stares at the couch, his backpack on his shoulder.

 

When she's back, she tilts his head to the side again. He hasn't noticed the wet sponge in her hand.

 

It's cold, and she rubs it in his hair near his temple, and on his ear.

 

"I put jizz in your hair," she mutters, as a way of explanation. She steps back.

 

"There. You can go."

 

She takes the stairs.

 

He stands there for maybe a good minute.

 

Eventually, he leaves.

 

 

One afternoon, she walks him to the door.

 

That  _never_  happens.

 

When he tells her he'll see her on Saturday, she shakes her head seemingly reluctantly, informing him she won't be home that week-end.

 

He ignores the pang in his chest that manifests itself everytime he thinks about the possibility of her seeing other men.

 

Focusing instead on the fact that she tells him to come back the following Wednesday.

 

 

It doesn't take him until then, though, for him to notice the  _For Sale_  sign on the Millers frontyard.

 

There's no car in the drive way.

 

Not then, not the next day, or any day that comes after.

 

 

The Millers have moved out of the neighborhood.

 

 

 

That was a year ago.

Whatever was going on between him and Mrs Miller, it's only lasted five months.

 

 

 

And now, he's standing there.

Trying to make sense of what's happening--

\--staring up at Jones.

 

Jones.

 

Naked, crying at the top of the stairs.

 

 

When he lifts her up with his arm around her waist, securing her to his chest, he's sure he's hurting her, but she doesn't say anything, and his heart is beating too hard for him to have the presence of mind to be considerate.

 

\---fix this, he needs to fix this.

 

He undresses faster than he dressed up.

 

 

Then he holds her, and it's the best he's ever felt.

Ever.

 

So much so that when he dozes off, then wakes up without Jones against him, he really regrets having had a taste of that kind of peace of mind.

 

Uncertainty creeps up on him again.

 

He feels paralyzed.

He doesn't know if he should stay, or if he should go -what the standard procedure is.

Doesn't know If she'd like him to get the fuck out of her bed, now.

 

And he's really afraid to ask, because he's afraid to find out. 

 

That people don't stay after sex was a given to him less than an hour ago. Now everything is unscripted.

 

He realizes he's got a lump in his throat when he hears her climb up the stairs, one step at a time.

 

He sits up, shivering at the cold, still shirtless.

 

He sees her foot delicately push the door open a moment later.

 

She turns the lights on with a bump of her elbow on the switch.

 

He squints his eyes at the warm light coming from the ceiling, then blinks rapidly.

 

 

She's wearing his sweatshirt.

 

The one he dropped on the stairs.

 

 

And in her arms, snacks. One bag of potatoe chips, two packs of cookies, a few candies---

 

He searches quickly for any sign of annoyance on her face, finding none.

 

Needless to say that the smile tugging at her lips then, really catches him off guard.

 

She's pretty resilient, if she's already forgiven him his stupidity.

 

She drops everything on the bed, on his legs, then whispers, tapping on the pack of cookies:

"I'm so happy. I always ask my Dad to buy these, but he never does."

 

He readjusts himself to sit straight against the headboard.

 

"Why are you whispering?" He whispers in return, to mock her. But then, he freezes.

"Are your parents home?"

 

"They are."

 

"What?!"

 

"Just kidding."

 

He grunts, rolling his eyes.

"Hilarious."

 

The sleeves of his sweatshirt hide her hands completely.

 

He gestures at the snacks: "Are you offering me those in exchange for my sweatshirt? Because no fucking way."

 

" _Hilarious_ ," she parrots, climbing into bed.

 

She crosses her legs and sits facing him just next to him, rolling the sleeves up to her elbows.

 

She squirms a little, then opens the bag of potatoe chips and turns the opening to him, putting it down next to his hip.

"Be careful with the chips, don't crush them," she says, picking up the pack of cookies.

 

The second she lets go of the bag of chips, he takes it in both his hands, and patiently  _presses_ ,  _squeezes_ ,  _wrings_  -effectively crushing into dust the totally of the chips inside.

 

When he looks up at Rey, she's staring at his hands, her own gone completely still on the pack of cookies -her mouth agape.

Somewhere between pure shock and incredulity.

 

" _Oh_ , you wanted me to  _not_  crush them," he says flatly. "I thought you said  _please crush them_."

 

She looks at him. Then closes her mouth slowly, blinking.

 

"I'm sorry," he deadpans.

Trying really hard not to break character.

 

"You look very sorry."

 

"Because I am."

He picks the bag up, and slides his hand inside. "Would you like some?"

 

"Yes please," she replies, extending her hand, her mouth in a straight line. Each of them competing for the most convincing poker face.

 

"Here," he says softly, putting in her hand a small handful of crumbs.

 

"Thank you."

She closes her hand carefully around the crumbs.

Then throws them at his face -the quasi totality landing in his hair.

 

He closes his eyes just in time, remaining perfectly still.

 

He clears his throat.

 

"I think you inadvertently dropped some on my face."

 

"I'm sorry."

 

"It's okay, it can happen to anyone."

 

"Can I have some more?"

 

He pauses, his lips twitching. Then inhales, his hand sliding in the bag a second time.

"Certainly. Be careful this time."

 

"I will."

 

The second the crumbs are in her hand she very predictably throws them at his face again.

 

He blinks away the crumbs on his eyelids.

 

He  _has_  to admire her, because she's way better at keeping a straight face than he is.

 

"I think a good solution would be for me to pour them directly into your mouth," he suggests, "--cut the middle man. »

 

"I don't know if I---" she starts, then stops her sentence when he pours the totality of the bag over her head.

 

_What a sight._

 

Her hair, her brows, her shoulders -everything is covered.

 

She's very still for a few seconds. Eventually, she spits the crumbs that fell on her lips, huffing.

 

It's her turn to clear her throat.

 

"I missed your mouth," he kindly informs her.

 

She wipes off the crumbs around her eyes carefully with the pads of her fingers. "You think?"

 

"Yes, you have some in your hair. Here, don't move, I'll get it."

He bends, and proceeds to pick a single crumb out of her hair, before showing it to her: "See?"

 

"Is that everything?" she asks.

 

"Oh yes," he nods, " it's all good now."

 

"There's nothing left?"

 

"No, nothing."

 

She shakes her head.

Crumbs fall everywhere around her.

 

He bites the inside of his cheek repressing his growing joy the best he can.

"Well I mean I got the most of it."

 

"Right."

 

"Can I have a taste?" he asks, reaching for another crumb perched in her hair -before eating it.

 

She winces. " _Gross!_ "

 

"...that's  _rich_ , for someone who smelled my armpit."

 

Her mouth and her eyes open wide as can be. Her cheeks darken.

He can't keep a straight face this time, and smirks.

 

"That's, that's ----not the same thing!" She stutters.

 

"Sure."

 

"It's not!"

 

"Sure, if you say so," he shrugs, opening the pack of cookies.

 

"...it was through the t-shirt--"

 

"I was  _there_ , no need to recount the event," he says, his mouth full with half a cookie.

 

She bats his hand, making him drop the other half.

 

He makes a show of sighing deeply, rolling his eyes.

"If you want me to kiss you, _just ask_. Don't throw a temper tantrum. »

 

"You see through me."

 

He swallows down his cookie, then bends the most he can toward her, his hand sliding around her waist.

"You  _have_  my attention, Jones. You don't have to f--"

 

She cuts him off with her hand on his face, pushing him away.

" _Ow,_ " he protests, rubbing his nose. "Can  _you_  kiss  _me_  then?"

 

"I'm busy eating."

 

"All jokes aside I'm a bit cold," he says pulling on the blanket to get her to move so he can cover himself.

 

She squirms, to stand up, he thinks.

 

Instead she crawls to him.

And holds him awkwardly, letting herself down on his lap, so that her body covers his, her face in the crook of his neck.

 

"Thank you," he breathes, arms around her waist.

 

A peck on his neck is what he gets in response.

 

He closes his eyes.

 

He doesn't know how long they stay like this.

 

 

For a reason he can't explain, this is how he breaks the silence: with a whisper.

 

"Jones... what did you do, that day... to--" 

He pauses.

 

"What?" she asks, voice muffled against his neck.

 

He opens his eyes slowly.

 

"To be on canteen duty."

 

He holds his breath. 

 

She mercifully doesn't mention the scene it brings to mind.

 

"Harris asked the whole class to introduce ourselves one after the other."

 

Ben waits for the rest, but it doesn't come. She's silent for so long he's sure she won't say more, and he doesn't plan to insist.

 

But she parts a bit from him, her head still on his shoulder, and continues.

"...he wanted us to give aloud our names, and the professions of our parents."

 

She pauses again, then says: "When it was my turn I just gave my name."

 

Because she's quiet again, Ben raises an eyebrow:

"--that's why you were on canteen duty?"

 

"Harris insisted, and I told him that it was... none of his fucking buisness," she mutters.

 

Both of his eyebrows raise.

"Oh," he breathes.

 

A few seconds pass before he murmurs: "... worth it, then?"

 

...immediately cringing internally thinking about what he means by that.

 

If it was worth meeting him.

\--the way she did.

 

 

He melts in her arms a short moment later, when she holds him closer.

 

Whether she understood what he meant or not, he could cry from the sheer relief he feels to hear what she whispers next.

 

 

"Yes. It was worth it."

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Anyplace is better / Starting from zero got nothing to lose / Maybe we'll make something / Me, myself I got nothing to prove](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwrHwZyFN7M)


	18. A much easier life

 

 

She's pratically falling asleep against his mouth. 

 

They're both under the blanket now, his eyes barely opened, hers completely closed. 

 

His eyelids are heavy but he doesn't stop kissing her, his lips pressing gently everywhere from her nose to her chin, almost kissing blindly, kissing the faint taste of sugar off her.

He doesn't even know for how long he's been at it. At some point, she most definitely melts in his arms, not even kissing back anymore, but slowly going limp, her neck soft and her head rolling to rest on his shoulder.

 

Her fingers lightly grip at his wrist, the one resting on her neck as he holds her chin up to him. 

 

He's succesfully kissing her to sleep. 

 

He never wants to leave this bed, and he wants to fight the urge to fall asleep. The time he spends here flushed against her can't be wasted  _sleeping_. His eyes flutter shut, but he opens them back, fight to stay awake.

 

What will he wake up to, if he closes his eyes?

 

Will life be like before?

 

Such a demanding, laborious thing for him, to trust that that peaceful feeling won't stop, that what happened tonight will happen again. 

 

All he's left to understand now, now that they stopped talking, now that everything is silent again apart from her quiet breathing, is that he's a poor fuck who's really not used to good things.

 

Something murmurs to him not to get used to it. He knows he ought to shut it down, but it seems to have a life, will and voice of its own. That it will follow him around, and force fears down his throat.

 

When she's the one to wake him up after he fell asleep despite his best effort, he doesn't have it in his heart to smile back. 

 

She turns the light from the ceiling on. 

 

She doesn't have to tell him anything for him to understand that he should actually go now, if he doesn't want her parents to find him. 

 

She still uses her words. Impressive, because his throat, meanwhile, is really tight, and he doesn't say anything back right away, just stares at the pillow.

 

"Most nights they come back around four. They might be gone until tomorrow night, but I can't know for sure. I'm not supposed to leave the house..."

 

He doesn't want to meet her parents.

He's said it before, he hates them. Doesn't really matter if it's deserved or not, it's just how he feels. 

 

He sits up on the edge of the bed without a word. He picks up his shorts and his t-shirt and puts them on. 

 

"Sweatshirt, Jones."

 

He says it without looking at her, busying himself with the task of tying his sneakers. 

 

 _Sorry_ , she murmurs.

 

He doesn't reassure her, doesn't tell her she's got nothing to apologize for, doesn't smile at her, just waits for her to take it off. 

 

She pulls it over her head and she's naked again. 

 

She hands it to him, shoulders a bit up. Shame, uncertainty -or the cold. He can't tell. 

 

He puts it on. He hates that it's so warm. 

 

She reappears in front of him with his jacket on. 

 

It crosses his mind that what's going on right now is normal.

 

Staying in bed forever is a poetic idea, but it's not happening -ever. He's okay about it, he's okay with things coming to an end. He is, he really is. 

 

The sight of the frontdoor as he steps down the stairs makes his chest tight. Once downstairs he picks up his backpack, still not looking at her.

 

Naturally, he doesn't run out the door, even if he'd like to, given how heavy the silence is again between them now.

 

She's shifting from one foot to the other, and he's just staring at the ground.

 

Eventually, he opens the door. It's dark out. A night without a single star.

 

She stammers.

 

"I'll see you at school, on Monday?"

 

Turning a fact into a question. 

He ignores why, but it irritates him. 

"Where else would I be," he mutters. 

 

She looks down, or rather anywhere but at him. 

 

"No I... I know," she breathes, sheepish. 

He goes to leave, but she speaks again, stopping him. 

"Is, is... your mother waiting for you? At home?"

He frowns.

 

"Of course not."

 

He gives his answer a bit like a reproach -like that's a stupid question, because she knows the answer already.

 

But it's also the sudden mention of his mother.

His reaction isn't volontary, it's physical. 

 

She squirms. "Okay," she breathes again.

 

He waits a few seconds to see if she'll elaborate.

She just shrugs and looks down at her feet.

 

His tone is kinder when he speaks again. What he says, though, is still meant to cut the goodbyes short. Why draw out what is clear unpleasant for everyone?

 

"See you, Jones."

 

He waits a short moment, then, for her to say something back. 

 

He doesn't admit it to himself or doesn't realize it right away, but it unsettles him to see her tuck her chin in instead.

Stubbornly looking down, not showing any sign of acknowledging his Goodbye. 

 

She doesn't say anything. 

 

It does a bit more than unsettling him, in fact. 

 

But is he the kind to be honest with himself? 

 

He'd much rather pretend like it doesn't affect him. If he believes it enough, it might eventually be the case. 

 

When Han ignored him, yelled at him, disappeared several days in a row, Ben would do it a lot, pretending like he didn't care. 

 

And Ben doesn't care to know where his father is today, or what Han thinks of his son, does he? No he doesn't. 

 

When Mrs Miller left, he didn't care either. 

 

People who don't care have a much easier life. They really do. 

 

That's what he's thinking when he passes the door. His throat tighter than ever. His jaw set. 

 

Leaving Jones behind without a word. 

 

_People who don't care have a much easier life. They really do._

 

 

 

"Mom?"

 

Leia has her head turned to him when he turns the light of the living-room on. 

She's sitting on the couch. He almost jumps finding her there. 

 

"What the--uh,  _hell_  are you doing in the dark?"

 

He squints his eyes looking down at his wrist watch.

It's 3.10 A.M. 

 

"I was watching T.V."

 

"...okay."

 

"I couldn't sleep."

 

"Okay."

 

He stands there for a moment. She doesn't say anything else, just rubs her eyes.

 

When he's going for the stairs, she stops him. 

 

"Benjamin?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

Leia's looking down at her robe, pulling on a loose thread.

 

She looks like she wants to talk, but is tired of talking. Like she's had the same conversation over and over in her head. 

 

"You know I trust you. I trust that you take good decisions, and I know you're not helpless."

 

He blinks. 

"Um, thank you?"

 

"You're welcome," she replies very seriously. He frowns, more disconcerted by the second. 

 

"Tonight I called Sofia," she informs him. "When you didn't come home." 

 

A beat of silence that should speak volumes. Yet in that moment, he's still oblivious. Doesn't find anything to say other than  _Okay_  again. 

 

Shrugging.

 

"I asked if you were with Finley," Leia continues calmly, "she told me that her son was supposed to find you at Utopia tonight." 

 

She looks at him. 

 

"Just like you said over the phone two days ago," she adds, as if for herself only. "And. I said  _well, that sounds about right_. Even though I couldn't be sure."

 

There's another pregnant pause, a longer one, that Ben doesn't know how to take once more.

 

_Is he supposed to speak?_

 

That's a strange atmosphere to go home to. He never has any sort of conversations with Leia, let alone at 3 A.M.

 

"When you weren't here, past midnight, I called her again," she says finally. She looks at him.

 

"Past midnight Benjamin. I asked her,  _is your son home? Yes, he is. Is my son with him? No, he's not_."

 

He huffs quietly.

"So?... I was just somewhere else."

 

She nods.

But then goes on with her story.

 

"Then she tells me, that... Finley told her that you didn't show up, tonight. When you were supposed to."

 

She looks back down at her robe.

 

"...And that he had no idea where you were."

 

"Am I supposed to keep Finn informed of my whereabouts at all times?" He asks, irritated.

 

A bitter smile tugs at her lips. 

 

"No. Nobody would expect that from you..."

 

She pulls on the loose thread.

"...Finn isn't your mother."

 

He presses his lips in a tight line.

 

Keeping in an exasperated sigh, and many other things.

 

"I called Kes, then. He told me Poe was home." She swallows.

"And that you weren't there either. He woke Poe up to ask him too." She sighs.

 

"When I called everyone I knew, I sat down, and watched T.V. Do you know why?"

 

She can't see him, but he rolls his eyes.

 

_"Why?"_

 

She purses her lips, speaking very quietly in the silence of the house.

 

"...because there's no use in calling the police on an eighteen year-old when he's been missing for a few hours only."

 

 

Another very long pause. 

 

 

This time, he's actively trying to find something to say. 

 

He's only able to swallow thickly. Again, and again. 

 

 

"So I had to wait," she finally says. "And here you are."

 

Her voice remains perfectly even. The way a voice does, when the person speaking has been emotionally drained. She's detached, because she's exhausted.

Distant from her own feelings.

 

The question comes very simply, feels very genuine as if she truly didn't know the answer:

 

"...Did I ask you to let me know where you'd be tonight?"

 

He doesn't answer.

 

She offers some help:

 

"...when you called your friends, two days ago."

 

"I forgot."

 

"You forgot, or you don't care?"

 

He clenches his jaw, and shakes his head lightly, as if in disbelief.

 

Only when she stands up does he notice how swollen her eyes are. 

 

She looks straight at him. 

 

It's not a confronting glare. 

 

All he sees are two, red, tired eyes looking back at him. 

 

"When I called Sophia Lopez and Kes Dameron tonight, they knew where theirs sons had been. What they were doing. Who they were with." 

 

She waits for him to react maybe. He doesn't.

 

She passes him eventually.

 

"I'm going to sleep, now."

 

He doesn't know how long he stands there before moving to finally go up to his room. 

 

 

After that, Sunday goes by way too fast and too slowly at the same time. 

Hours are spent anxiously playing in his head what will possibly happen with Jones on Monday. What she expects him to do or not to do. 

He wants to be at school  _now_ , find out how life will be from now on -and also, he really doesn't. 

Nothing has been solved at all, has it? Eveything was supposed to be simpler now. 

He wasn't supposed to be doubting anything, he was supposed to be  _certain_. 

Yet here he is, still, unable to tell what's supposed to happen next -regardless of what he desperately wants to happen.

 

Clueless still.

 

At a loss. Fumbling.

 

 

But she can be the strong one, he thinks.

Trying to reassure himself.

 

She can be the one who's certain, between the both of them, can't she?

When Monday comes, and he has to go, he tries to remember how to walk, essentially.

 

His heart slams against his chest when he sees her from afar in the schoolyard.

 

 

She's leaning alone against a wall, seemingly just waiting for the bell to ring.

Then  _he sees that she sees him._

And she freezes.

The way she looks at him could be perceived as expectant, hopeful, indifferent, resentful -he can't assess the nuances, because he doesn't let himself the time to properly do so, or better yet, to check his impressions by actually _walking up to her and talk to her_. 

All he can clearly see during those very few short seconds, is that she doesn't move. 

She doesn't make a move toward him. 

It frightens him effectively.

 

And rather than letting more seconds go by and confirm further more that she's not seeking his presence the way he craves hers, or that there's the slightest chance, at least, that she doesn't want him anywhere near her, rather than find out the truth about that, he lowers his head, turns and walks in the nearest building. 

\---because who wants to be hurt all the way so soon, when you can be hurt later? 

He can wait until his English class this afternoon to have his heart broken. 

Uncertainty has turned into a safe haven in the blink of an eye. 

 

And if the rest of his morning in class is a complete blur, his mind a confusing mash of self-hatred and regrets, he survives it.

He sees her again before English class, though. 

Jones doesn't eat often at the canteen -at least, he hasn't seen her there often, whether because they don't eat at the same time, or the crowd keeps him from noticing her. 

The reason why he easily spots her this time, aside from the fact that his eyes are it seems efficiently trained to recognize her form, is because he sits at a table facing hers. Quite far away, out of ear shot, but still close enough for him to see her.

 

Students are loud around them, louder than usual. 

 

He's alone, for once. She's not.

Next to her, Julie, and a boy Ben doesn't know, who's sitting facing the other way, are having what looks like a boring conversation -a conversation Jones is not participating in. 

She's facing him but Ben can't see her face: she's hiding her eyes with a hand, elbow on the table next to her tray. 

She's not eating. 

 

Meanwhile, he's not eating either, because he's staring at her instead. 

An because his stomach hurts like fuck. 

 

It takes her to meet his eyes for him to realize he's been at it for a few minutes, like a true psychopath. 

 

And when she does, it's shocking to him that, despite liquefying under her gaze, he doesn't lower his eyes. 

 

Yet nothing has changed since this morning in him.

 

The only reason why he's not lowering his gaze now, or walking out of the canteen, is that he can't have much doubt about what he finds on her face this time. 

 

Students are laughing, yelling, chatting around them, walking by them. 

 

 

They just silently look at each other. 

 

His heart is pounding. 

 

Before he can give himself a chance to think better of it, before he can make it about himself, actually worried about what he sees, he mouths something to her. 

 

 

_Are you okay?_

 

 

His lips have barely moved. 

 

With everything going on around them, he can't possibly imagine that she's understood what he's tried to ask her.

 

But apparently, she doesn't need to know.  

Seeing him try to talk to her in that small way unlocks something he doesn't even comprehend in that moment. 

She gets up, her mouth downturned, chin a bit in.

 

Then, she's walking toward him. 

She's not meeting his eyes directly but doesn't slow down, dodging the other students on her way.

 

The boy who was eating with her turns briefly to look at her leave. 

He stands up too, but his legs are too weak, so he's not moving from where he is. 

At the way she looks up at him, the way she strains herself toward him, he knows immediately what she comes for. What she needs. 

 

She walks right into his arms.

 

He holds her against him, right against him, where she needs to be.

 

Then bends to help her reach his mouth.

 

There's no hesitation, no question about it. It just feels necessary, urgent to the both of them. 

 

The first few times they part, they do it as if to check if that's enough, and it's not.  

It's clear to them both, at the way they barely move the rest of their bodies, that they will take as much time as they need to feel right again. 

 

When they do part more than a single second, her eyes are a bit wet but overall, she's melting against him just like she did the last time he kissed her, the last time he had her in his arms. 

 

"Please," she breathes. "Don't--"

 

It looks like her troat is too tight to go on. When she says it, no matter how fragile she looks, and no matter how polite she is, it doesn't sound like a request -it doesn't sound like she's pleading.

 

"Don't leave me alone."

 

He says it the only way she'll hear it -without the faintest trace of uncertainty.

 

"I won't."

 

There's nothing to add to that.

So he repeats it until she nods in his hold. 

 

 

 

It finally feels like a proper beginning. 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**EPILOGUE**

 

 

 

"Jaimie. Jaimie. Jaimie."

 

 

"Don't---fuck,  _Poe_ , don't!! ...shake my arm while I'm holding my tray --- _what???_ "

 

 

"Are you a figment of my imagination?"

 

 

"Unfortunately no, I have to endure your presence for real."

 

 

"Yeah that's what I thought, this is the real world, right?"

 

 

"Where do we sit?"

 

 

"So you see them, right??  _There_. The tall asshole and the smaller asshole tucked in his arms? You see them? I'm not imagining them??"

 

 

"Poe."

 

 

"Yes?"

 

 

"Remember a minute ago, when I told you I was reminded of something Klimt did?"

 

 

"Uh--"

 

 

"And you asked quote unquote  _Klimt who's Klimt is he new in the Rap game?_ "

 

 

" _...uuuuh---_ "

 

 

"And I told you  _no he's a painter, those two remind me of a painting he did_? and you asked, _when you say_ those two  _do you mean your balls_? and I said  _I don't fucking know why I'm friend with you?_ "

 

 

"..."

 

 

"So yeah I was talking about them. Not my balls. So to answer your question yes I can see them."

 

 

 

 

"...fucking nerd."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I'm in so deep / You know I'm such a fool for you / You've got me wrapped around your finger / Do you have to let it linger? / Do you have to, do you have to, do you have to let it linger?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0jkLC4ciuE)
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT: [Some additional, gorgeous fanart for this last chapter](https://yu-miou.tumblr.com/post/179759911677/today-was-supposed-to-be-my-last-inktober-day)... I can't believe you gracious talented people have blessed us so many times with your talents/illustrations. Thank you so much, this is yet another beautiful piece. I'm over the moon.  
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you so, so so much for reading. I hope you know how much I appreciate your comments, kudos, likes, reblogs etc.  
> You're truly the best readers one can hope for. 
> 
> If the last months are anything to go by, I should be writing a new fic soon.  
> In the meantime, see you on Ao3, or tumblr? :)  
> Take care <3

**Author's Note:**

> You guys, I have a [tumblr](https://ao3animal.tumblr.com/) and a [twitter](https://twitter.com/ao3animal)  
> You can find infos there if you're looking for ways to support me
> 
> Say hi =)
> 
> (Also, this is new: now exists a [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0xo2SAVYGMHKZQIGAB8fRl) with the songs used in the chapters' notes of this fic -enjoy?)


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